A City in Harmony

Jacqueline Pereira | 23 September 2026

Seventy musicians and 60 singers from Orkestra Kuala Lumpur, the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo and other ensembles came together at Auditorium Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur on Sept 11 for an evening of music spanning Japanese folk songs, 'Getaran Jiwa' and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

ONE by one, they came onto the stage until there was barely a vacant space left. Men and women, young and older, tall and short, carrying instruments and music sheets, taking their places beside one another. The gathering seemed somehow familiar, like the everyday convergence of people in a city, each arriving from somewhere else, each carrying something of their own.

On Sept 11, that diversity came together at Auditorium Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur for an evening of music that crossed borders, generations and traditions. Orkestra Kuala Lumpur joined the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo, alongside Malaysian and Japanese soloists and the Young Choral Academy Chorus, in a programme built around memory, cultural exchange and, ultimately, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Ode To Joy.

They tuned, conferred quietly, adjusted their chairs and waited. Then Japanese conductor Keiko Mitsuhashi raised her baton, and the hall fell silent.

What followed was the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, composed more than 200 years ago, rising from discord into lyricism, from quiet reflection into great waves of sound. Then the soloists – soprano Tan Sin Sim, alto Otoha Kobayashi, tenor Tan Chee Shen and bass Ryo Makiyama – joined the combined choirs, their voices transforming the symphony's character as they rose above the orchestra.

Listening to the many voices and instruments – 70 musicians and 60 singers – find their places within the whole, it was hard not to think of Kuala Lumpur itself. A city of different histories, cultures and voices, not always in agreement, but capable, when given the space to listen, of making something unexpectedly harmonious.

"It’s a revolution," said Mitsuhashi of the performance. Beethoven's Ninth is technically challenging, and the musicians had only four days to rehearse, with some days stretching to eight hours. While the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo had performed the work many times, it was the first attempt for Orkestra Kuala Lumpur.

"While we may come from different countries or cultures, we don't have any differences through the music. You know, on the stage we're all together. All together. You'll see," she said before the concert.

Music shaped by memory

The carefully curated programme unfolded in surprising and inventive ways. Hiroshi Ando, the recently retired general manager of the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo, conceived the selection around two significant milestones. Founded in 1956, Japan's foremost independent professional choir turns 70 this year, while next year marks the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and Malaysia.

Ando chose Beethoven's Ninth for its universal message. "Its message is to unite people all over the world to become brothers and sisters. To promote peace."

Hosted by Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) as part of its Merdeka Month Cultural Events programme, the evening brought together the orchestra and chorus with Malaysian and Japanese soloists and the local Young Choral Academy Chorus. The programme moved between Malaysian, Japanese and Western musical traditions, with each piece carrying its own sense of place and memory.

Before the familiar strains of Beethoven's Ninth filled the auditorium, the audience had travelled through an Australian rainforest, Japanese folk traditions and a Malaysian song that has become part of the country's musical memory.

To involve the audience in the "theatre piece" of Stephen Leek's Kondalilla, members of the Philharmonic Chorus slipped into strategic positions around the hall. Evoking Queensland's Kondalilla Falls and the surrounding rainforest through aleatoric vocal writing (where the final outcome is unpredictable and left to random chance), the singers created atmospheric, almost elemental sounds rather than conventional melodies.

The concert thus began with a place – music attempting to turn landscape and cultural memory into sound.
This was followed by Toru Takemitsu's Chiisana Sora (Small Sky), an intimate piece of unaccompanied voices, space and silence, evoking a child's memories of a blue evening sky giving way to a field of stars.

The third piece needed no introduction for the mostly Malaysian audience. Getaran Jiwa, although immediately familiar, took shape as something entirely new when rendered by Japanese voices. What we regard as distinctly our own was suddenly returned to us through another musical culture – familiar, yet not quite, to the delight of a rapturous audience.

Next came Michio Mamiya's Chiran Bushi, an old Japanese folk song exploring the intimate emotions between young men and women, followed by Kosaku Yamada's Red Dragonfly, a much-loved children's song carrying the ache of a child's recollection of the countryside and nostalgia for a Japan already slipping into the past.

One of the most scintillating pieces was Minao Shibata's Oiwake Bushi Ko. The male singers moved through the auditorium like travellers crossing a mountain pass, with eight versions of the melody meeting eight patterns from the female chorus. The order is improvised by the conductor, meaning that although the work has been performed more than 2,000 times, no two renditions are ever the same.

Ko Matsushita's Sōran Bushi, drawn from a Hokkaido herring fishermen's work song, brought the physical energy of communal labour into the hall, its vigorous calls echoing the effort of hauling nets.

The first half ended with an uplifting rendition of Sakura Sakura, its familiar melody filling the hall with warmth and delight.

The repertoire, infused with choral traditions, place and cultural identity, felt like an act of remembering. Folk melodies carried the texture of landscapes and labour, while the choruses gave them new life. Nostalgia was in the air, but so was renewal – tradition being passed on, reinvented and heard afresh.

Cultural exchange isn't only about introducing audiences to unfamiliar things. It involves taking something familiar and allowing someone else to hear it differently. That is what happened with Getaran Jiwa, and perhaps it is what vibrant cities do, too. They hold traditions brought from elsewhere, absorb them, alter them and, over time, make them part of their own story.

Kuala Lumpur has always been shaped by movement – by communities, cultures, languages, traditions and ideas arriving from elsewhere and meeting what was already here. On this evening, that process could be heard in music: a Japanese choir singing a Malaysian classic, Japanese folk traditions finding new expression on a Kuala Lumpur stage, and Malaysian and Japanese musicians working together on one of the Western canon's most ambitious works.

Perhaps that is what made Beethoven's Ode to Joy particularly resonant here. Its message of people coming together did not remain an abstract idea in the music. It was embodied on stage by 130 musicians and singers from different backgrounds, listening to one another, responding to one another and finding their place within something larger than themselves.

For a city constantly negotiating its past and its future, there was something quietly fitting about the evening. Memory was not treated as something fixed or distant, but as something that can be carried, shared and transformed. And, for a few hours at least, Kuala Lumpur became the place where those different memories met – and made music together.