You remember last January when I "discovered" Sapardi Djoko Damono and his poems, right ? Well, this time, it's a contemporary composer. I heard it for the first time at a dinner at Jeroen Kohnstamm's (a friend of Chendra, and now a friend of mine as well) beautiful house beside the river Vecht. He was cooking a very nice meal based on chicken, salad and some pasta, and we were drinking wine in his living room (Geoffrey King, Chendra Panatan and Iman Ahimsa -- a photographer and ex-fashion designer he is a friend of Jeroen and someone new to me who I was happy to get to know). In the background was the Dutch classical radio (oh yes, I forgot to tell you that I am writing this in Amsterdam) . At one moment sounded an incredibly beautiful, exquisite choir piece (we were talking so we didn't listen to the presenter), and silence dawned on us . Everybody was asking to himself who that damned composer was, and Geoffrey was the one who told us it was John Rutter (although he didn't know exactly what piece it was) .
So, "one of the world's leading pianists of new music" (that's what Sydney Morning Herald wrote about me, as well as some other newspapers) ..... and I didn't know John Rutter until 3 days ago . My God, now THAT is music.
In fact, I should confess that a few weeks ago I received a program of an English flutist who played my piece "You Had me at Hello" and she also played a piece by John Rutter. But since I thought that he was just a fake composer like a few other thousands who are comfortable writing avantgarde music, I didn't bother to check him out. Oh, well, nice to know that there are many good composers I still haven't discovered .... in fact, I am sure that many people have not discovered Geoffrey King. He is a really fantastic composer, and I will talk about his music in a few days when I am not in a rush like now . By the way, Chendra made a blog for him so he can have fun while taking breaks from his composing. Check it out at http://gfjking.blogspot.com
