Tang Hon Yin – In Search of Magical Margins
7 min read
Still Life (30 x 21cm. Gouache on paper, 1959).THE Tang Hon Yin Retrospective is a fitting culmination of the artist’s Space Odyssey of half a centu...
Penang Art Society – Doing Art with Open Arms
4 min read
Ch’ng Huck Theng, current president of the Penang Art Society.Penang Art Society, established in 1953, is the oldest registered art society in the s...
Penang – Motherland of Musicians
9 min read
As a small state, Penang is certainly not short of talent – perhaps it’s in the water we drink. It has produced many musical geniuses throughout the...
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Smells Like Indie Spirit
5 min read
Penang in the 90s. Independent music had just exploded onto the scene and the air was electric with Nirvana and Metallica.“Every other kid had an electr...
Buskers with a Cause
6 min read
It is quite surprising for musicians who have countless hours of practice under their belts, spent more on music lessons than their parents would want to recall...
The Teenage Kotai Singer
4 min read
At 19 years old, Catherine Wong is one of the youngest kotai (“song stage” in Hokkien) singers in Penang. Her foray into the industry makes for a cu...
Ensuring Teochew Opera Has A Future
4 min read
Ling Goh was born into a family of Teochew puppet and opera performers. Descended from an unbroken line of opera performers dating back to the nineteenth centur...
Penang’s Very Own Choir
4 min read
To complement the Penang Philharmonic Orchestra, the mixed choir Voices of Penang Philharmonic was rejuvenated in 2016.The ensemble is a capella-focused and p...
Play it Again, Penang!
11 min read
It would be difficult to discuss Penang’s classical music scene without mentioning Datuk Woon Wen Kin, founding president of the Penang Symphony Society,...
Telling the Astounding Stories of Malaysia’s Para Athletes
4 min read
Last October, I was in Jakarta to be with the Malaysian contingent competing in the Jakarta Asian Para Games. The minister and I wanted to spend as much time as...
Realities of Living on the Clan Jetties
5 min read
The Clan Jetties community has been living with the sea as backdrop for generations. This inseparable connection with their environment has formed an essential...
Vestiges of Penang’s Entrepot Days
7 min read
As the last surviving Chinese surname jetties in Penang today, the beginnings of the Clan Jetties are intertwined with the island’s once-bustling entrepot...