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Saturday, October 11, 2003



With an interest all along in Cantonese Opera, Steven Ma became a student to Lung Koon Tin. After honing his skills for a while, Steven finally has a chance to tread the boards and he took part in a charity concert together with his teacher Master Lung and opera stars Joyce Koi and Ng Mei Ying. When he was partnering Joyce, they had a few scenes of comedy raising laughter from the audience. With this debut performance from Steven, he says that he was not nervous at all as he felt it was more like a party.

Steven was singing in aid of the Hong Kong Arthritis Fund and sung a few classic pieces with his co-stars, but he was not nervous at all. He said: "I was very serious about it, sleeping at half past ten last night and waking up at 10am this morning to practice, then drinking ash water to open my voice at lunchtime. I was not nervous because one is my teacher and the others are my friends who know me very well who will help me at the first instance if there is any flaw in my performance. Also, this is a charitable performance and the audience know I am a beginner so they will not expect much from me and it really feels like a party."

With Steven's description of a party feel, it is certainly not exaggerated because he created a few laughs together with Joyce Koi. When Steven was holding her hand to come out on stage, he suddenly said: "Your hand should be facing upwards!" Joyce explained: "I am used to playing the men's part!" When the four were singing together, Master Lung knelt down to let his lady sit on his thigh, but when it was Steven's turn, he mixed up his left and right legs and Joyce was forced to stand and making the audience laugh out loud.

Steven and Joyce have previously worked together on a TV series, but this is the first time they have co-operated in singing Cantonese opera and commenting on the performance of this newcomer, Joyce says he has done very well: "Singing Cantonese Opera is a lot more difficult than singing normal pop songs and I saw that Steven was sweating when he was singing the second song. However, for his first performance, it is certainly not bad."

http://www.singpao.com/20031012/gossip/459885.html


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