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Yip enjoys superstardom at a comfortable pace
Hong Kong pop music diva Frances Yip
estimates she has sung her signature song more than 10,000 times, but she still
brings down the house whenever she belts it out.
"If I don't sing it [Shanghai Beach], my
audience won't let me get off the stage," said Yip, fresh from an Alaskan
cruise and gearing for her upcoming concert here.
The Saturday performance at the Queen
Elizabeth Theatre will mark Yip's 10th or 11th visit to Vancouver (she's lost
count) since she first played the Orpheum in 1984, returning to the Plaza of
Nations during Expo 86.
Her last appearance was at the Orpheum two
years ago. Before that, she sold out two concerts at the QE in spring 1999.
But like fans of her Western contemporaries, such as Diana Ross and Tina Turner,
people often fear that any visit now could be Yip's last. After all, at 54 and
having survived breast cancer, she describes herself as being in
"semi-retirement," performing far less frequently (about a dozen times
a year) and usually mostly for charity rather than personal profit.
She dispels fans' concerns, saying she'll
keep singing as long as the demand is there and they keep buying tickets.
"I've never seriously considered [full] retirement. I would be bored,"
Yip said. "I still enjoy the buzz of performing. Like a good cognac, people
say I get better with age."
Besides, Yip, who's a "golf
fanatic" sporting a 12 handicap, enjoys her visits to Vancouver, especially
to look up old pals and golfing partners.
She's looking forward to teeing off this week
at the Westwood Plateau Golf & Country Club in Coquitlam, voted among the
best courses in Canada.
At the peak of her career in the 1970s and
'80s, Yip worked up to 17 hours a day, for all but six weeks of the year. Her
venues have included nightclubs in Singapore, London's prestigious Savoy Hotel,
aboard the luxury liner QE2 and at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
What sets the multilingual Yip apart from
other Cantonese pop stars is her longevity and the fact many of her songs are
sung in flawless English. (Her husband and manager is British-born David Lomax,
a former journalist).
A milestone in Yip's career happened in Hong
Kong in November 1998, when she performed at two sellout concerts at the Hong
Kong Coliseum, backed by the 92-piece Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
Since winning a Hong Kong television singing
contest in 1969 with her rendition of Dusty Springfield's You Don't Have to Say
You Love Me, Yip's career has spanned 33 years and more than 80 albums, recorded
in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Thai, Japanese and Polynesian.
In her early days, her music was influenced
by the likes of Connie Francis, Patti Page and Karen Carpenter.
"I'm a big Barbra Streisand fan, but I
don't have the same range," Yip said.
"Now I listen to Marc Anthony and Ricky
Martin. I enjoy Julio Iglesias, but only in Spanish.
"When I met Julio in Singapore, I told him, 'Please, please sing in Spanish
and leave English to other people.' "
Yip's wide-ranging repertoire includes cover
versions of Streisand's Evergreen and The Way We Were, as well as Celine Dion's
My Heart Will Go On, Tina Turner's Simply the Best, and three Andrew Lloyd
Webber compositions, Cats, With One Look and You Must Love Me. She also
does Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender and Cliff Richards' Ocean Deep, but in
Cantonese.
Her signature song -- called Sheung Hoi Tan
in Cantonese -- was written for her in 1980 by lyricist James Wong and famed
composer, Joseph Koo, who is now retired and living in Vancouver.
The tune was the theme song for The Bund, an
immensely-popular 60-episode TV drama series that rocketed actor Chow Yun-Fat to
stardom.
For weeks, every night at dinner time, Hong
Kong's streets would empty as people went home to catch the next episode. The
series is still shown in reruns and is available on video, while Yip's song
remains the rage in karaoke bars around Asia and parts of North America.
Last year, Yip fulfilled one of her ambitions
by appearing in one of the leading roles in Jubilee, a Cantonese stage musical
that ran every night for 10 weeks.
In the hit production, Yip portrayed a
lovestruck young singer pining to find a husband. "It was quite something,
being in your 50s and behaving like a 20-year-old," she laughed.
She sang duets in Cantonese, Mandarin and
English with Annabelle Louie, now a Vancouver resident who will be Yip's guest
performer on Saturday.
Yip, who has performed in more than 30
countries on five continents, has involved herself in various fund-raising
activities to benefit such charitable causes as medical care, assistance for new
immigrants and nursing homes.
Last November, she headlined a concert in the
Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, raising more than $450,000 to finance
education for underprivileged children. In January, she helped launch the
Singaporean government's national breast cancer awareness program through
concert and TV appearances.
Net proceeds from Saturday's QE concert will
be donated to Vancouver's United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society
(SUCCESS) to allow the social agency to operate its day-care centre for senior
citizens.
Yip's Vancouver visit is part of a four-city
North American concert tour that will take her to Toronto on May 25, San
Francisco May 27 and 28, and the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City June 2. -
by Wyng Chow Vancouver
Sun May 13, 2002
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