〔轉貼〕I sing the same tune with M&M
from: G <eling032@singnet.com.sg>
HK's singing sensation Sandy Lam has found her ideal business manager in
Singapore's Music & Movement (M&M)
by SAMUEL LEE
For Sandy Lam these days, work is akin to the search for a soulmate.
"It's like finding a partner you are comfortable with," the Hongkong singer
tells Sunday Plus in mellifluous English in a phone interview from Taipei.
"It's not just about making money," says Lam.
Having worked with other management companies in Hongkong, Japan and Taiwan
during her 16 years in the entertainment circuit, she has eschewed big,
impersonal setups to sign up with Singapore's very own artiste
management/production house, Music & Movement (M&M)
"It's an all encompassing management contract with no termination date,"
says Mrs Ng Yee Lin, its general manager for Lam's deal with M&M.
To Lam, artiste management is an exercise in intimacy.
Which was why she had been without a manager ever since her close friend and
then-assistant Hongkonger Alice Kong left her to pursue a PhD in New York in
the late 1990s.
That was until July this year when she hooked up with Ng when Lam was in
Beijing for the 2001 CCTV-MTV Music Honors.
A month later, Ng and M&M's managing director, Mr Lim Sek, met Lam in
Hongkong to map out her career.
"It feels just like a natural extension of our friendship," says Lim, who
has always been an admirer of Lam's timeless voice.
'In the past, whenever Sandy or her previous management like Hongkong's
Stardust Factory needed any input, they would just pick up the phone to call
me."
Lam's special relationship with Singapore began way back in 1989.
Before forming M&M with singer-songwriter Dick Lee that year, Li was
producing his last variety show for the former TCS called We're 10 - in
celebration of TCS' 10th anniversary.
Both Lee and Lam were guest performers on the show.
They has heard of each other but had never gotten acquainted till then.
After the show, Lee invited Lim and her back to his pad to chill and to
check out his background arrangement of Mandarin evergreen Lover's Tears on
his Asia Major album.
Impressed by its jazzy lounge vibe, Lam agreed without hesitation when Lee
asked her to sing it.
This signalled the start of a fruitful working relationship between Lam and
the two Singaporeans.
Throughout the 1990s, Lee and Lam enjoyed a symbiotic working and personal
relationship.
Lee wrote and produced her albums like 1994's critically acclaimed
Wildflowers, and as a sign of closeness, she invited Lee to be her special
guest in her first concert at the Hongkong Colisuem in 1991. Later that
year, she returned the favour, touring with him in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka,
Nagoya and Sapporo.
Though she was not managed by M&M, she obliged gladly whenever she was
invited to sing in M&M projects.
Waiving her fees, she sang for free in 1995's The SSO Plays The Music of
Dick Lee and last November's Singapore Music Festival.
Hers was the headlining act at the festival, and she played to a sold-out
crowd at the University Cultural Centre.
The audience was so taken up with her that she had to tell them to go
home -- twice, after two encores. Singaporeans were also the first to hear
songs from her album 2001 Sandy, which was launched shortly after.
The fact that an A-list act like Lam has taken up with a Singapore set-up is
no mean feat.
Ask her why and she does not hold back her praise.
"Music and Movement is good, and there are no better choices around. We talk
in the same language and share the same ideas," explains Lam, placing a high
premium on communication.
And her preferred mode these days is the electronic medium.
I do most of it via email. It's better than the past when it was just fax
and phone," she says, downplaying the need for physical proximity with her
Singapore management.
But the mobile phone remains an essential means for staying in touch with
her three daughters: a three year old with husband, composer producer
Jonathan Lee whom she married in 1998, and two step daughters from his
previous marriage.
A source close to the star reveals that they would call her every day when
she was away in Vancouver and Shanghai recording her as-yet untitled album
for months on end.
Slated for release early next month, her new album - her third on Virgin
records - is one that is very personal and extremely close to her heart.
"Never have I been so involved. From the engineering and producing to
composing and arranging, I did it all," she recalls with relish, adding that
she co-wrote four tracks with Eric Ng -- another Singaporean.
With the recording wrapped up in mid-September, she sand alongside Broadway
doyenne Elaine Paige in four concerts in Beijing and Shanghai which
celebrated the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber in late September and early
next month.
And lately for her, it has been shutling back and forth from Hongkong for
the image packaging for the new album.
Clearly, the dynamo in her is still revving.
"At this stage, what I want to do is music and more music. I see all sorts
of possibilities.," she says.
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