Gardens by the Bay and Mediacorp National Day Concert returns to the Gardens’ grounds

Performers

Profiles

Alaric Tay

Alaric Tay is known to audiences as the endearing nasal-voiced newscaster, Andre Chichak, and the charming news anchor, Xin HuaHua, in Mediacorp’s popular English parody show, The Noose. His performance earned him continuous recognition at the Asian Television Awards with the “Best Comedy Actor” nominations two years in a row in 2010 and 2011.

Alaric was the lead actor and producer of Zombiepura, a movie that took seven years to produce — from its conceptualisation back in 2011 to its world premiere in October 2019 at the Scream Asia Film Festival. Besides having a successful run in cinemas across Singapore, the movie was also shown across 85 screens in the Philippines, and a DVD version was released in Japan. The tail end of 2019 saw Alaric grace both local English and Mandarin channels, from The Noose Clips to Happy Go Lucky (欢喜没烦恼) and Jalan Jalan (带你去走走).

Annette Lee

Annette Lee is a Singaporean filmmaker, actor, and singer-songwriter. She is best known for her videos that she creates on social media, where she consistently connects with more than two million people monthly. A storyteller at heart, Annette sees her work in film, comedy and music as ways of telling tales that can touch lives.

In addition to writing The Cai Fan Song from her own series The Ann & Ben Show, she has also performed her original music at festivals like Baybeats and Mediacorp specials. In 2020, she released her second album titled Song For The Underdog produced by five-time Grammy winning producer Jerricho Scroggins. This song went on to win the “National Youth Music Award” in 2020, and another track titled Gold went viral on Tiktok.

Benjamin Kheng

Benjamin Kheng is a Singaporean musician, actor, host, and writer who made his debut back in 2012 as one of the founding members of popular local pop-quartet – The Sam Willows. The group has performed globally at the SXSW Festival in Austin, the Canadian Music Festival in Toronto, MU:CON and Zandari Festa in Seoul, the Singapore F1 Grand Prix 2013 and 2014, as well as the Western Australian Music Festival in Perth.

Benjamin released his highly anticipated debut EP A Sea That Never Stops in June 2020. To-date, the EP has garnered over three million streams. Benjamin’s releases have rewarded him with a nomination for MTV EMA’s “Best Southeast Asia Act” in 2020, representing Singapore in the highly anticipated annual award show. Early this year, he released a new single Fresh Feelings featuring R&B Artist J.Sheon.

Chua Enlai

Chua Enlai was born in Singapore and grew up in New Zealand. Since returning, he has worked on over 50 theatre productions. The versatile actor is equally captivating onscreen, the silver screen and the stage. Enlai is best known for his work on the International Emmy-nominated series The Noose, playing the well-loved characters Jacques Ooi, BB See and Pornsak Sukhumvit. The show was aired on Mediacorp Channel 5, as well as Comedy Central Asia, and won him two Asian Television Awards, “Winner of Best Comedy Performance by an Actor”.

Enlai also fronted programmes on Mediacorp Channel 5, The 5 Show and later Not The 5 Show. It was a weekly programme that featured topical stories and studio guests who are of interest to everyday Singaporeans. 2013 saw Enlai’s foray into Mandarin-speaking programs with Happy Go Lucky (欢喜没烦恼), Laughing Out Loud (笑笑没烦恼), I’m In Charge (小子当家) and Say It (好好说慢慢讲), the highest-rated variety programme in Singapore that year.

Dick Lee

The multi-talented Dick Lee has firmly established himself as a performer and composer, and is often recognised for his works as the spokesperson for the new Asian generation.

Having collaborated with top Asian artistes like Sandy Lam from Hong Kong and Japanese group Zoo, he has also written countless songs for the top singing talents in Asia including Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Sammi Cheng, Anita Mui, Miyazawa of the Boom and Stephanie Sun, amongst others.

His most notable writing is one of Singapore’s most popular national songs, Home. Though composed in 1997, it is sung by Singaporeans to this day and has been unofficially chosen as the song that best represents Singapore. Dick has also written two other songs for National Day, We Will Get There, and SG50’s signature song, Our Singapore.

Jean Danker

Jean Danker is synonymous with radio, having been in the business for almost two decades. She now hosts the top-rated evening drive time show, Cartunes, from 5.00pm to 8.00pm on CLASS 95. Jean is also a television presenter who has hosted the prestigious President’s Star Charity and the talent show, The 5 Search.

Live crowds love her too! She hosted the National Day Parade for many years and has also fronted events for SKII, Dior and Chanel. Jean is adept in interviewing stars, having hosted the Asian Television Awards and the Dragon Blade red carpet events.

Joakim Gomez

Joakim Gomez first became a household name as an 18-year-old during the second season of Singapore Idol in 2006, where he emerged as one of the top five.

Since then, he has been the only finalist signed on by Mediacorp where he took on various acting, hosting, and performing projects. He pursued a career on 987 as a part-timer, and was signed on as a full-timer within a year. Joakim now co-hosts The Shock Circuit with Sonia Chew every weekday from 6.00am – 10.00am on Singapore’s Number One Hit Music Station, 987.

Rui En

Sebastian Tan

Best known for being Singapore’s favourite Broadway-singing, Hokkien-spewing Broadway Beng®, Sebastian’s theatrical journey began in 1992. His theatre credits include the Broadway Beng series, Forbidden City, The LKY Musical, The LBK Musical, the Crazy Christmas® series, The Happy Ever Laughter series, Twist of Fate, A Singapore Carol, Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beansprout, Masters of Comedy, Titoudao, Into The Woods, Fried Rice Paradise, Army Daze, Sing to the Dawn, Kara-U-OK! and UK tour of Miss Saigon, amongst others.

His directorial credits include Honk!, Just So!, 3 Little Pigs (assisting), Monkey Goes West 2014/2016 ("Best director nominee”, Life! awards). Meanwhile his on-screen credits include Fried Rice Paradise drama series, First Class, Payday, Judgement Day, The Blue Mansion, Mr Unbelievable and NDPs in 2007 and 2013 as host and performer.

Shabir

Shabir is one of the most esteemed flag bearers of Tamil music in Singapore – and his commitment to the cause is not merely ceremonial. An award-winning singer-songwriter, music producer and performer, he was also the inaugural winner of Vasantham Star 2005, a reality talent competition hosted by Mediacorp Vasantham.

Shabir achieved mainstream success in India as a composer, songwriter and singer in the highly competitive Indian Film Music industry in 2019. He released back-to-back songs, and managed to garner over 115 million collective views on YouTube for his song, Yaayum. Shabir was also the first Singaporean to work on eight feature films in India.

Shabir was featured in Our Singapore’s music video for 2019’s NDP. He also performed his original single Together at 2020’s NDP and was also one of the four lead singers for last year’s NDP theme song.

For this year’s National Day Concert, Shabir will be performing the title track for the fifth season of Vasantham series, Vettai, and his latest release, Rubaiyat Kavithai, a love song about a poet and a classical dancer.

Syazwan Rahmad

Syazwan Rahmad is a Singapore-based dance choreographer, professional elite dancer, and performer. Trained in a wide variety of dance styles ranging from Hip Hop to Ethnic Fusion, it is no surprise that he is widely respected and highly sought after in the dance industry.

Throughout his dance career, he has danced for many renowned artists such as Johnny Hates Jazz, Rick Astley and Siti Nurhaliza. Among his repertoire of professional works are his choreographies for local artistes such as Aisyah Aziz, Benjamin Kheng, Inch Chua, MunahHirzi ,Sandra Riley Tang, Tay Kewei, Tosh Zhang, and many more.

A natural-born performer with strong vocal prowess, captivating showmanship and mesmerizing aura, Taufik Batisah won the hearts of the masses when he was crowned the first ever Singapore Idol on 1 Dec 2004.

With a wide music repertoire of jazz, sentimental ballads to street hip hop and pop, he has established himself a versatile performer and one of the region’s biggest stars since emerging to stardom.

In recent years, Taufik has also ventured into acting and headlined in various TV and movie productions in Singapore and Malaysia. He won “Best Actor in a Leading Role (Drama Special/Anthology)” in the Malay TV Awards Show Pesta Perdana in 2019.

Xiao Ming

Yung Raja

Singaporean breakthrough artiste Yung Raja has created waves of success for himself as a rapper, songwriter, and actor. Since his emergence as a rapper, Raja has been dubbed as Hip Hop’s next avant garde bilingual artiste with his tasteful unification of English and Tamil lyrics.

Yung Raja found viral success in Singapore and Malaysia following the release of his debut single Mustafa. His second single, Mad Blessings, caught the eye of Lupe Fiasco and M.I.A., and was the first English-Tamil song to be played on Malaysia’s leading Malay radio station, Era. Yung Raja’s third single, The Dance Song, gained traction in Singapore, Malaysia and India, with the song garnering more than six million views on the official Tik Tok challenge. Three tracks in, the rapper has already amassed over three million streams on Spotify and more than three million views on YouTube.

Born and raised in Singapore, Raja aims to reinvent societal views in and out of Singapore, inspire the next generation of cultural conservators, and elevate Southeast Asian Hip Hop to world class stages through his music.