My daughter's growing up, but I am not

This is the foreword to my new "Alicia's 3rd Piano Book", due to be published the end of this month January. The book contains more than 30 short pieces of mine of diverse technical difficulties. ============================================================================================================================================== Apparently my daughter Alicia Pirena isn't the only inspirer of my works in this book. In fact, she has now stopped playing the piano, and happily pursuing her other interests. Many pieces in this book serve as sketches of larger works I wrote during this period, mostly for the film "Hari Ini Pasti Menang" (Today We Shall Win) and "Air Mata Terakhir Bunda" (Mother's Last Drop of Tears), both of very different stories and atmospheres. There are also pieces written as a gift to my dear friends, such as the birthday present to Edith Widayani the brilliant young pianist, the wedding gift to my childhood friend who is now a prominent writer Laksmi Pamuntjak, a commemoration to the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Indonesian Classical Music Foundation to the 84-year-young piano pedagogue Mrs. Latifah Kodijat etc. All of them are inspired by the dedicatees, sometimes with a starting point as simple as using their name / initials as the motif. .......................................................................................................................................... One curious thing is my obsession, until now at my age, with the so-called "music box" effect. I did make my mom crazy with me repeatingly winding up the many music boxes that we had back when I was small. My favorite one was my mom's jewelry box that sounded the love theme from the film "Godfather" (which became my favorite film of my life later!) every time one opened it. My favorite activity was waking up at 5 a.m. on an alarm clock which sounded like a music box and listening to it for half an hour, half asleep winding it up numerous times, until I had to get out of bed at 5.30. Being half asleep brought that sound into territories in my brain that usually aren't readily open if I am awake. The sonic memories remain there until now, more than the other music that I have heard when I was small. And that, I think, explains the many music-box-effect in my music. Just in my pieces for this book, I could mention its existence in pieces such as We were once children, too, Mother's Love, He's Gone, ... and in Falling in Love (Alicia's 1st piano book) the whole second half of the piece is in fact imitating a music box, with its ending in need to be wound up! .............................................................................................................................................. If Alicia's 1st and 2nd Piano Book contain music only for the piano, I add a new element of joy in this book: playing with another instrument. Therefore there are pieces for piano together with a flute, an oboe (Echo's Whisper, a 4-minute piece that forms a diptych with my older piece for flute and piano based on the related mythological character, Narcissus Dying although each of them could be played separately), a double-bass (yes! It IS possible to make beautiful music with this instrument!), 3 pieces with violin and 1 piece for a trio of english horn, violin and piano (the latter 4 pieces are used in the film "Air Mata Terakhir Bunda") ............................................................................................................................................. I am grateful to the piano teachers at Marcia Music School, Surabaya, and their team leader Patrisna May Widuri for going through the pieces, determining and grading their difficulties.