Saturday: The annual New Music Forum presented by the SSO and conducted by Lim Yau was definitely a high. There is something very exciting about hearing music recently written by local composers and performed in Singapore. It is an experience which cannot be reproduced anywhere else on the planet. This is not yet another interpretation of Bach or Beethoven. It's an experience that truly centers one in the present. It's cutting edge and whether you are a fan of New Music or not, you know you're part of something very special when you attend such a concert. Hats off to everyone involved in ensuring this forum continues.

Sunday: The low was possibly my all time low in experiencing classical music. I naively purchased a ticket for the Vienna Philharmonic thinking I was going to see just another high caliber visiting orchestra. But the Vienna Phil is more than that: it's one of the last institutional bastions of Aryan sexism. There was one token female member of the orchestra in a sea of male white faces. I have since learned that the VPO believes in maintaining their "artistic integrity" by ensuring the race and gender uniformity of their ensemble. In recent years they have bowed to pressure to employ women and people of other races but only by making token gestures. To date, one Japanese national has been hired (a tubist) ...and three women (two harp players and one violinist) although they stock up extra female players whenever they tour the US to make it look good. They are obviously trying to make their own subtle statements on the issue, however, as the harpist on the evening was male... Given that there are so few male harp players in existence, they no doubt had to go out of their way to find this one.

Perhaps my comments should restricted to the music ... but as their hiring policies are not about the music why should I restrict myself to the higher standard they have failed to meet? The VPO is about white men playing white men's music and presumably we are to infer that they share some genetic credentials with the likes of Mozart. I'm amazed they didn't have restricted admission lest the integrity of the audience threatened the caliber of the performance. The VPO is a perfect example of why classical music has failed to attract new audiences ... the image is of a bunch of old, white fuddy duddies with antiquated, insensitive, conservative and exclusionary ideas about art: They're snobs ...  and as we see sexist, racist ones to boot. What a disappointment.