Happy Chinese New Year!! We wish everyone all the success and luck. Woot year of the DRAGON!! This means Pentatonics will have damn good year since we got 4 dragons in the group (Myself, Samson, Ada and Herbert) bringing in all the luck. And our success for the new year has already begun since we had an awesome performance for Fairchild’s Chinese New Year Eve countdown celebration at Aberdeen. Pentatonics kicked off the event and definitely brought the party rock to Aberdeen. Thanks to everyone that came out to support us. If you missed our performance, no worries there’ll be plenty others and we also got a full video footage of our performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7JaSkQAbDQ

Songs:
1. Canon in D Rock
2. Explosive
3. Chinese New Year Medley
4. 活著viva

Pentatonics had a fabulous time performing at Vancouver Diamond Lions Club’s fundraising gala for the Canadian Cancer Society. We performed a 30 minute set and of course the songs Fairy Tail and Everlong/Explosive were a crowd favorite once again. At this performance, we played for the first time Herbert’s arrangement of Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson and we totally rocked the stage  except we were just missing the moonwalk move from Kenny and Charlie. But next time we’ll definitely incorporate it into our performance!

Do you guys ever wonder what we do in the change room while we’re waiting for our turn to go on stage?? HOMEWORK! Well, half of us are doing homework and the other half are fooling around. Me (Michelle), Kathy, Samson and Herbert are still in school at UBC so we were busting our butts off doing those final projects, reports and preparing for final exams.

This is our final scheduled performance of the year and Pentatonics will be up and ready to go for 2012, year of the DRAGON!!!

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Pentatonics was honoured to be chosen to perform at the finale of UBC’S GOT TALENT. Opening the night with Everlong and Explosive, Pentatonics definitely boosted the adrenaline level of the audience, and exposed the rocker genes hidden in each everyone of them. At the end of the night, by popular votes from the audience, Pentatonics was awarded with second place! Congratulations to Sittinon for winning first place with his mind-blowing Rubik’s cube skills, and Unlimited Dance for placing third with their  flawless dance moves.  Mission accomplished!  Special thanks to AMS society of UBC for organizing this event, and our member Michelle Kwan for catching this opportunity

On the other note, summer’s here! Penties are enjoying their summer by rehearsing new songs arranged by drummer Anson Zhang. Aside from jamming on a sunny Sunday, here’s an update to some of their busy summers:

Michelle is currently taking summer classes at UBC and once they’re over she’ll be heading off to beautiful, glamorous land of LA.

Having traveled London, Paris, Rome and many pretty European places, Kathy is tanned and happy to be reunited with the rest of the Penties.

How are your summers so far? Leave a comment below and share with us some of your “Pentastic” moments!

On March 13, Pentatonics was invited to perform at the annual Bridge to S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Gala. First time performing “What a Wonderful World” arranged by our drummer, Anson Zhang, we hope to dedicate the song not only to S.U.C.C.E.S.S. but also everyone that has been making the world a wonderful world.

With the sun shining brightly on a Sunday, it’s proven that spring is near. Pentatonics welcomes the flower blooming season with new goals to focus on our musical development. New songs? perhaps.

A little background about this event:

S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is a non-profit charitable organization for the purpose of promoting the well-being of Canadians and immigrants. It provides social services, employment services, business and economic development services, training and education services, and health services to the people in need.

Bridge to SUCCESS gala is one of the most anticipated fundraising events in Metro Vancouver. Taking place at the Vancouver Westin Bayshore Hotel, with approximately 1000 guests, which included community leaders, attended this event. This year SUCCESS invited famous singers Jessica Yan, Gustavo Herrera, and us to lead the entertainment section of the gala. Over $500,000 were raised in this event.

Stay tuned for more pictures and videos!

UBC Engineering Faculty invited Pentatonics to perform at the Engineering Excellence Celebration since we won 2nd place at UBC’s Got Talent (WOOHOOO!!!). 1st place winner Sittinon was also a guest performer and he was showing off his skill of solving a rubix cube in one hand and eating a banana in the other under 15 seconds! Of course Pentatonics has got our own tricks up our sleeves and wowed the crowd! We definitely inspired some of the engineers out there in the crowd =)

Fun Facts:

Did you know that every member of Pentatonics is either a student or alumni of UBC (with the exception of Anson who is in highschool)?

Did you know none of the members in Pentatonics are/were music major at UBC?

So we all do our own thing by day and we’re rockstars by night!!

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Pentatonics was invited by CCM (Chinese Christian Mission) to perform at their Chinese New Year Variety Concert. The concert had a New Year ad Valentines Day concept and we played A New Day and Huaxin to match the theme of the concert. It was held at the Broadway Church and this is one huge church. It had a huge screen mounted on the rear top of the stage as you can see in the photos. Haha it was funny where Anson was placed. He had his own shack, isolated from the rest of the group.

We wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year!

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Ubyssey has interviewed Michelle prior to the UBC’s Got Talent event:

Michelle Kwan – Pentatonics

What’s your talent?
We are a Chinese instrumental band called Pentatonics consisting of nine musicians. Rather than playing traditional Chinese music, Pentatonics uses Chinese instruments to play mainstream music such as pop, rock, cross-over classical and many more. The instruments we play include erhu, dizi, guzheng, pipa, ruan, yangqin, drumset and keyboard.

How did you learn to play?
Like most kids, our parents made us learn the instruments when we were little. We were all classically trained on our instruments and, recently, we wanted to do something different and more exciting. So we decided to form a group which incorporates Chinese instruments and Western instruments to play music that is more mainstream.

Full event interviews with other groups:
http://ubyssey.ca/culture/ubcs-got-talent-question-and-answer/