Teo Poh Heng collaborates on the soundtrack of a local movie.
Contributed By Sharon Tan
Teo (right) is a regular collaborator with Ng. PHOTO COURTESY OF TEO POH HENG
Veteran musician Teo Poh Heng, a worship leader at City Harvest Church, combined forces yet again with film music composer Joe Ng, in the recent local movie It’s A Great Great World. Evoking the nostalgic moments of the ‘40s till the ‘70s, each of the classical and acoustic guitar pieces have been painstakingly arranged to frame the scenes and bring out the poignancy behind Singapore’s legendary amusement park, Great World.
“In the film, I worked on six guitar pieces, using the instrument to accompany each scene and the accompanying dialogues, tracing the moods of each character on screen. In total, I took around six hours drilling myself to familiarize myself with the scores,” said Teo.
The S$2 million film directed by Kelvin Tong features a star-studded cast including Dennis Chew, Kym Ng, Xiang Yun, Chen Shu Cheng and Joanne Peh. The movie chronicled the stories of various characters who lived, worked, played, sang, danced and fell in love in Great World.
This was not the first collaboration between the two—Teo has also worked with Ng on soundtracks for films such as Do Not Disturb (2007), Gone Shopping (2008) and Rule Number One (2008), an international horror film starring Hong Kong actor Cheng Ekin and Shawn Yue where Teo recreated passionate tango pieces to suit various scenes in the movie.
“It was a privilege to work with Joe, who is hailed as one of Singapore’s leading film and television music composers and is the sole music head and working partner of Kelvin Tong. I am challenged in my craft to work on various projects and recordings as each movie would entail a fresh music angle, a different requirement and a new scope,” he says.
Teo’s musical talents will next be featured in another upcoming romantic movie entitled Forever, which will open in local cinemas island-wide on Feb. 26.
