Vietnam Music & Arts Education – ASEAN ‘Be Our Rock & Pop Soul’ music competition

Trinity is a supporter of this year’s Vietnam Music & Arts Education - ASEAN ‘Be Our Rock & Pop Soul’ music competition’. The competition was open to performers from countries in South East Asia including Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Indonesia.

The competition offered both bands and soloists the chance to perform and win a selection of prizes, including a professional recording for the winners, as well as music products, Trinity exam vouchers and cash bonuses for runners up.

The initial rounds of the competition were held in each country, where entrants submitted a video of themselves performing a song from a list of Rock & Pop songs chosen by VMA. The semi-final and final will be held on 6 and 7 September respectively in Vietnam, where the contest's four distinguished judges will be:

• Thanh Bui - Vietnamese singer and judge of Viet Nam Idol 2015
• Myke Brown - artist manager of Thai singer Tata Young
• Kelly Chew - CEO of record label BMBX Entertainment
• Tyler Smith - Senior Vice-President of Trinity College London, Asia
  
  

Country rounds:

Competition has been fierce across the participating countries and over the last few months, finalists have been chosen as follows:

• in Vietnam, the closing date for entries was 30 July and judges then selected finalists from the video entries on 10 August 

• in Thailand the closing date for entries was 31 May and finalists were selected through a national event on 21 June

• in Brunei the closing date for entries was 13 July and judges chose their finalists also through a national event, held on 27 July. You can view the Brunei finals highlights here: http://bit.ly/1Q5Saxs

• in Malaysia the closing date for entries was 3 July and they too picked their finalists through a national event on 25 July. You can view the Malaysia finals highlights here: http://bit.ly/1ID2aYO

• in Singapore and Indonesia finalists were picked from the video entries on 20 July

There are twenty six semi-finalists in total from the six countries. You can check out some of the videos entries from the selected semi-finalists here: http://bit.ly/1JzkC8C

The names of the semi-finalists are:

The semi-final will take place in the SOUL Convention Complex, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Sunday 6 September, where the 12 finalists will be chosen. This will be followed by the grand final at The Opera House, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Monday 7 September.

The final will be a ‘battle of the bands’ style competition, where each finalist will perform once and judges will then comment and give a score based on a number of different performance criteria.

There are a limited number of free tickets available for both the semi-final and final, which can be picked up from the VMA offices in Vietnam. For more information on the competition visit: http://bit.ly/1Vtdi3G