Map Diaries: Map's first concert

Babies' Proms poster

Today, Map and mommy went to our first Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO)'s Babies' Proms. Basically, Babies' Proms is the classical music concert for children aged 6 and below. Mommy managed to get the ticket last minute for the sold-out show - probably someone cancelled his/her ticket and we were lucky enough to get it. We only needed one ticket because children below 2-year old did not need separate ticket. The show was held at Esplanade Concert Hall - or better known as Durian building (because the building looks like a durian). Our show was at 10am, but Map and mommy went early to catch pre-concert activities half an hour before the show started. Map had a lot of fun with colorful balloons at the entrance.

Pre-concert activities - colorful balloons

There were a number of balloon twisters at the entrance to twist the balloons for kids. Map got her pink poodle balloon and green sword balloon. She was very excited.

Map picking out her balloon

Conductor balloon in the background

No one can take my pink poodle

The knight with the green sword

Balloon twisters in the background

The balloon house

Map and mommy came to our seat around 9:50am.

The stage before the show started

The audience filing into their seats

Map trying to strike conversation with the boy in the next seat

With mommy in our seat

The show started exactly on-time at 10am. The musicians came in wearing colorful T-shirts instead of their normal black tuxedoes and formal black dresses (because it is kids' show). The colors of their T-shirts depended on the kind of instruments they played.

Woodwind instruments - such as flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon - green T-shirt.
String instruments - such as violin, viola, cello, base - yellow T-shirt.
Brass instruments - such as french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba - blue T-shirt.
Percussion instruments - such as drum - red T-shirt.

The conductor wore red tuxedo instead of his normal black one.

The musicians

The concert this time had the pirate theme, so most of the songs are pirate/sea - related songs. The conductor would ask the audience to participate - clap hands, wave, answer questions. After playing the pirated-related songs for a while, the conductor introduced each instrument and had the musicians in each of the 4 categories played the same piece of music - one category at a time, so the children could hear how different the same piece of music sounded. Four kids were allowed to come up to the stage and became a conductor for a short while - this must be a lot of fun for those kids. For the last song - children as many as could fit the stage were allowed to come up to be close to the musicians. Map was still too young for this - maybe in the next Babies' Proms she would go up. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures or videotape during the concert.

Map had a lot of fun at Babies' Proms - she would wave her hand along with the music. The concert lasted one hour - the first 45 minutes Map was enjoying herself. But the last 15 minutes she started to get frisky.

After the show finished, Map didn't want to leave the event. Didn't look like Map was the only one, as there were a lot of kids hanging around afterwards. However, the show people came to usher us out of the venue at 11:20am because they had to prepare for the next show at 12pm.