Odyssey No.14: Asian Electone Festival @ Istana Budaya

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Ah...Sorry for this late post, kinda felt guilty not sharing it. So here goes.

Last Saturday Zhi Lin, John and I went way north to Titiwangsa to catch the Asian Electone Festival!

Well, I thought it would be nice since it's an international competition and electone is still a new thing to me.

So we departed from the train station at 12:00p.m. , with absolutely no idea how we should go to Istana Budaya XD

Our stop was KL Sentral, we had our McDonald's lunch there.A picture of KL Sentral.

So, we took the Monorail to our destination, Titiwangsa. After another 20 minutes ride, we finally reached the last stop for the train.



Well, luckily Istana Budaya is visible from the monorail station, which means that it's within walking distance.

Okay, the walk was long. And we passed through blocks of abandoned buildings on our left, which looks haunted and very spooky...

Can you spot the ghost?


When we reached the place (it was my first time in Istana Budaya), my thought was it's quite a cool place. Took quite some photos there.

The theater in our sight!

A closer look.

The exhibition just outside the auditorium.



Beautiful neh...

Spreading the Love!

The entrance to the auditorium.

Some work of art by some local artist.

The time was like 1:30p.m., John called his teacher, Mr.Pok, who had our tickets. He came and gave the tickets to us. BUT THE COMPETITION STARTS AT 3.00p.m.!!! Aww... Came too early, no wonder the place is so empty.

Then we took out our books and study lo...SPM coming already ma...

The auditorium was opened at 2.45p.m., and we went inside to be seated. The interior was also SO COOL! XD... No la, but not too shabby either. Our way in.

This feels like "Phantom of Opera-ish"
The seats.
It's so empty :O
Aww... No chandelier leh...
We bought RM3 ticket :O


And so the event started at 3p.m., the emcee was, awful LOL! To be honest, she's not good enough, let's say, not up to par for international event la...

Okay... So about the competition it's quite entertaining, as electone can produce a piece like an orchestra.



But, there were a few things I would like to point out.

First of all, there was two contestant in the Junior Section that claimed that they composed and arranged their pieces for this competition. I'm skeptical la. One 8 years old girl compose a full orchestra piece ah? Who are you trying to bull? Mozart also not that pro la! And the other, 12 years old boy, his song is jazz wor! With jazz scales some more! Walau... I don't believe he composed that la...zzz... Seriously, what's wrong with these guys? I'm pretty sure their teacher helped them to compose the song, there's no way they could have done it themselves.

And uh, one thing I've found out, song choice is very important. Even though you are very skilled, when the song you played is shitty, you're shitty.The players there all are very pro, but some of them, their songs are just awful choice. That caused them the prizes. All the winners played impressive songs that just captivated the audiences.

One more thing!!! Banging the keyboard randomly will never win you any prizes!!!

Hmm... Nothing much then.



These are the winners for Junior Section.The winner is from Indonesia, who I agreed that he was the best. Runners-up was from Taiwan, was a bit nerdy, but hey his song was okay. The third prize... Okay, his song was nice, but I still don't think the boy composed that song.
For the Open Section, the winner was a Malaysian!!! His song was brilliantly done I'd say, he deserved the award. The second prize winner was a girl from Taiwan, she composed her own song, and it was brilliant too! Then the third prize went to a Thailand guy, it was okay, no comment. :P


Then there was a performance by the Special Guest Ayaki Saito, a professional electonist from Japan (duh!)... He was great! and not to mention humorous enough too...



And so, we left the building at 7p.m.. Tried to catch a taxi back to KL sentral since it's already very dark. Waited for quite a while before we got the cab.

The night view of Istana Budaya

The art gallery...

Night view of KL... Seriously, night photography is very interesting and fun. I wish I had a D-SLR and a tripod LOL!!!


So... Reached home at around 9pm, and there ends Odyssey number 14 :)

It was a new experience to travel in KL at night. Looking forward for my next time.



Next post - Odyssey No.15. So, stay tuned and till next time, cheers~