Music and Movement

Singapore jazz legend Jeremy Monteiro launches his own line of watches – and they rock.

- Alvin Wong

Forty years in the music business is an opportune time to take stock of how far one has come – not least in the notoriously challenging Singapore music landscape – and Cultural Medallion recipient Jeremy Monteiro, Singapore’s very own ‘King of Swing’, looks to be in a celebratory mood.

When CROWN met him at his home, Monteiro had just wrapped up his 40th anniversary concert, played to a packed house at the Esplanade Concert Hall weeks earlier. On his desk, a typed ‘thank you’ note to President Tony Tan, who attended the concert, and sheet music to One People, One Nation, One Singapore, one of the country’s most well-known National Day songs, which he composed in 1990. The accolades, awards and memories – the walls of his studio room are plastered with photographs of Monteiro with blues, funk and jazz legends – are proof of a musician still going full-throttle at the top of his game. But Monteiro says he doesn’t want to be “straight jacketed by music”.