from: G <[email protected]> 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. -- ▌ ▁▌ ▌▁ ▌|情報員標號: Toronto-ppp270319.sympatico.ca |局中| ◤ ▌ ▌ ▌▃ ▌|隸屬☆單位: 中央情報局 (bbs.e-cia.net) |邑情| ◣