Sing50 was a mega-concert extravaganza that brought together the largest-ever number of Singapore’s popular music personalities, past and present. The electrifying concert featured iconic popular songs, composers and performers; marking milestones of music in Singapore from the past 50 years. The concert was a birthday gift to the nation during SG50, Singapore’s Golden Jubilee celebrations.
The fact that Pico was already heavily involved in many of the Singapore 50 celebration activities made us the natural choice to assist with this remarkable event. We were delighted to have been invited to be both event manager and production manager.
Sing50 was one of the biggest concerts that the event team had ever organised, requiring more than a full year of planning. Pico sat in on the event project committee meetings and actively participated in discussions and planning for what was probably the biggest concert dedicated to Singapore music in history. The concert involved over 1,300 performers and featured medleys of over 70 iconic songs in the country’s four official languages, bringing together five decades of performing artistes on the same stage – creating a spontaneous, once-in-a-lifetime reunion for everyone.
The concert encompassed a vast spectrum of music, ranging from a tribute to Anita Sarawak and The Rock and Rolling Sixties; to ethnic pop music including Yang Gerek, Xinyao and Raagamatazz; and niche favourites such as Indie, We Love Musicals, Jazz moments, Rock Stars and Lion City Rap; to pop hits from regional stars such as Tracy Huang, Dick Lee, JJ Lin and Stefanie Sun; as well as a specially-commissioned piece of music to celebrate SG50. Its inclusive nature enabled the entire audience to sing and swing along and relive the timeless classics in this truly Singaporean spectacle.
Before the magic happened, our teams had much work to do. Those involved in the staging needed to consider both functionality and aesthetics, given that the stage had be designed and built to hold 50 grand pianos and a 100-piece orchestra.
The event management team also had to manage the highly diverse requirements and expectations of the many artists, as different genres of songs required different stage setups and logistics. The needs of the 60 artists, the 1,000-strong choir, 50 pianists, 14 rappers and the 100-member orchestra varied enormously. The actual selection of the songs was a time-consuming task, given the exhaustive list of songs to choose from. A great deal of discussion, deliberation and negotiation was required to come up with the final set list.
Logistically, the National Stadium presented a few challenges. As a relatively new venue, the teams needed time to become familiar with the benefits and limitations of the space; added to which the stadium is primarily set up for sporting events, meaning a great deal of lateral thinking was required to overcome acoustic and AV obstacles.
At the end of the day, the enthusiastic 41,000-plus audience were thrilled by stars who had been in the music scene for decades, and by the next generation of rising and emerging Singaporean talents. This concert helped unite the whole country in a festival of music, while introducing ‘the new to the old and the old to the new’ in an event of discovery and re-discovery.
“We would like to thank the team from Pico for your dedication, commitment and efforts in ensuring the success of Sing50. Your excellent production planning and scheduling of this mega-concert resulted in a calm and smooth running of the event. We applaud the Pico team for the great work and would like to express our gratitude for the partnership in making the concert a highly memorable SG50 event.” - The RICE Company Limited, Executive Producer of Sing50 Concert
