Program of the Year: 'High Quality' vs. 'Designer'

The Program of the Year category - the 10th Devotion Music Awards - 2015 of the Sports & Culture Newspaper (Vietnam News Agency) includes four nominations divided into two "sides": Two "queens" Ho Ngoc Ha (entertainment), My Tam (pop) and two "kings" - one is in the jazz field and the other is the king behind many music projects.

There are not many singer live shows this year, because singers are caught up in live show series such as Sol Vang, Dau An...

The "branded" names

My Tam and Ho Ngoc Ha are still two big names in Vietnamese showbiz. The proof is that both of their live shows were the focus of the media and public in 2014.

My Tam's live show Heart beat on November 10, 2014 at QK7 Stadium (HCMC) is easy to remember, also at this place, on February 29, 2004, My Tam had her first live show in her life - Yesterday & Now. Heart beat recreated almost all the beats of the live show 10 years ago and it deserves to be My Tam's most memorable live show in recent years.

The live show is a combination of a beautiful, eye-catching stage, great sound, and most importantly, My Tam's live singing ability. She sang nearly 30 songs live, not counting the songs with choreography, and she sang every song with the best emotions.

Program of the Year: Tran Manh Tuan and Symphony Orchestra (Tran Manh Tuan)

Meanwhile, Ho Ngoc Ha with Live Concert 2014 proved that she is still at the top. If three years before, Ho Ngoc Ha - Live Concert 2011 created a big echo in the music market with its grandeur, modernity and was considered the leading flag for entertainment technology, then three years later, with the live show celebrating 10 years of singing, the old flag was no longer leading. But the echoes remained unchanged.

Ho Ngoc Ha's appeal always comes from her name, considered the queen of entertainment. She always knows how to arouse curiosity about what she does. In the live show celebrating 10 years of singing, the stage tricks are given over to a smaller but more tranquil space. There, the stage is like a panoramic photo spread across, "laying out" all the thoughts of the singer who has just turned 30 with short, smart, multi-dimensional stories.

And so, the "meeting" between My Tam and Ho Ngoc promises to be a difficult problem for this year's selection.

Bumpy road

If My Tam and Ho Ngoc Ha are the names that “eat” the top market and are increasingly expanding their public reach, then the names Quoc Trung and Tran Manh Tuan are often “eaten” by loyal fans. They know that but still “dare” to do pioneering things.

The Monsoon Music Festival 2014 is an event with the ambition to “blow a monsoon wind into the music scene”. The program lasts for three days with famous domestic and international artists, with quite diverse music genres performed: rock, EDM, quan ho, indie, post rock… taking place at Thang Long Imperial Citadel to create a new meeting place for music.

Musician Quoc once said that he and his team did this not to "make a buck" because "no one would be foolish enough to hold a music festival for business, especially in the context of Vietnam's underdeveloped music industry" but simply, this festival will be a new, annual playground for those who love music.

Artist Tran Manh Tuan is also a person who always has the same dreams as Quoc Trung, although his field is smaller - jazz. Tran Manh Tuan always cherishes the dream of bringing jazz everywhere, from big playgrounds outside, to many stages in his hometown. The project of combining jazz with symphony is an experiment to bring jazz a newer musical atmosphere.

The two concerts in Hanoi have “opened” another dimension for the audience to discover more beauty in the works that Tran Manh Tuan has painstakingly written over many years. This program attracted attention because it was the first time in Vietnam that jazz music combined with a symphony orchestra - a program unlike any other.

And because they are not like normal, both Tran Manh Tuan and Quoc Trung became famous in 2014 thanks to such programs.

And it will be interesting to see them compete with the queens of popular music in this year's nominations. And in the Show of the Year category, can the "kings" topple the "queens"?

According to TTVH