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Karen Mok will retire from concert tours after this year

Don’t worry, she’s not retiring from showbiz altogether

Karen Mok will retire from concert tours after this year

When you hear that a concert tour is named The Ultimate Karen Mok Show, you’d probably have sky-high expectations for the gig. Now into her 26th year of showbiz, Karen Mok knows what she is doing, and promised that this tour, which will also be her final large-scale concert tour, will be the best that she’s performed.

The Hong Kong singer-actress made her way to Singapore ahead of her concert next month, where she spoke to the media at length about her plans after she retires from concert touring. Yes, you read that right: she will still continue singing.

“I don’t like to do the same things over and over again,” she explained. “It could be because I’m a Gemini, but I don’t want to repeat the same cycle of putting out an album once every one to two years, and then going on tour after that. It’s time for something new.”

Something new, in Karen’s books, includes challenging herself to do something that she’s never done before: devoting herself to musicals and theatre.

She shared, “I personally feel that musicals are the most challenging of the performing arts. You have to sing, dance and act at the same time, while doing it live every time you take the stage.” The 48-year-old has previously played the leading role in Broadway musical Rent, and auditioned for Miss Saigon.

Her ambitions don’t just stop at performing musicals, as she revealed that she hopes to lay the foundations for a thriving musical scene in China.

“London has the West End, New York has Broadway, and I think the Chinese audience is ready for their own version,” she mused. Acknowledging that they might have to create brand-new material for the Chinese audience, Karen shared that she might draw inspiration from well-loved plays such as Les Misérables when doing so.

Before she carries out these lofty inspirations, however, she will be taking a well-deserved break.

“I promised my husband (German businessman Johannes Natterer) that I’ll spend 2020 with him,” she laughed. “We haven’t made plans for where we’ll be going or anything like that, but we’ll definitely be spending a lot more time together next year.”

The break will come after almost two years of touring, as she kicked off The Ultimate Karen Mok Show last year to celebrate 25 years in showbiz, and will continue touring for the rest of 2019.

Singapore is the first stop outside of the greater China region, as she grinned that our little red dot holds a very special place in her heart. Even before she debuted as a singer, she came to Singapore with the Hong Kong Youth Chinese Orchestra. It was the first overseas performance she put on in her life, and she remembers it fondly till today.

The Ultimate Karen Mok Show, she continued, is the ‘ultimate’ in more ways than one. As the director of her concert tour, Karen explained that she has been meticulously poring over each and every detail of each show. “My duty isn’t just to stand on that stage and sing. I want to make sure that I give an ultimate experience every time, so even when we were deciding on the song list for this tour, I spent days figuring out which ones to put in!” she revealed.

“I’ll be pulling out all the stops, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put on a show better than this,” she declared with a grin. “For every show, we’ve also put on a special segment where I showcase something that resonates strongly with each host city. I have yet to find out what I’ll be doing in Singapore, but it’ll definitely be something to watch out for.”

The Ultimate Karen Mok Show is slated to take place June 15, 8pm at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. Tickets are priced at S$228, S$198, S$168, S$138 and S$108 (excluding booking fees) and are available on SportsHubTix.

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