THE FIRST ANGKLUNG PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR AT KATERINA HOTEL, BATU PAHAT

22nd JANUARY 2019 ~ The Angklung Group was invited to perform at a farewell lunch held at Katerina Hotel, Batu Pahat. It was organized by PUSPANITA Johor for the wife of the retiring State Education Director who was the Chairman of the organization. This should be the furthest distance we had to travel for an angklung performance so far.

We were already in school at 7:30 a.m. packing our musical instruments and had breakfast before pushing off. The bus only arrived at about 9:45 a.m. and the journey to Batu Pahat took about 2 hours. 

As the event would only start at 2:30 p.m. so we had the chance to continue practicing. First it was done at the small hall provided for us.

Then we had it in the real venue to familiarize ourselves with the stage and the sound system could also be tested.

we have a back up conga player this time, in pink

Packed lunch was prepared before the performance.

waiting for the moment...

the VVIP table

Our turn to perform was after all the speeches and prize-giving ceremony, while everyone was busy enjoying their food.

The new batch of angklung players performed once last October during the Principal's retiring event in school so we just played the same 4 songs again, plus a new number of a Malay evergreen number, "Isabella", made popular by the rock group, Search.

before taking the bow

tea after the performance

I was actually worried as we managed to meet in school only three times for practice sessions after the school reopened in January. Eventually, everything turned out well and I had to congratulate the boys for a job well done for the first performance this year. I will also have to personally thank Puan Latifah Abdul Ghani, the vice chairman of PUSPANITA, for inviting us to the event.

The most important thing, we will have to continue practicing and hope there will be more invitations for us to perform outside school.

"Isabella" in Angklung mode