A demisemiquaver note post-Ananda Sukarlan Junior Award

An advice for those who want to organize a piano competition : don't organize a small one. It is as exhausting as a big one. This year's Ananda Sukarlan Junior Award (ASA Junior) is not even half the scale of our bi-annual Ananda Sukarlan Award (always held in even-numbered years, starting from 2008) in terms of number of participants, prizes, repertory, duration and number of jury members (usually there are 5 sitting as judges, and now we were 3, but qualitywise it wasn't inferior at all. I humbly asked my highly admired pianist friends Henoch Kristianto and la sempre dolce Nathania Karina to be with me judging and I deeply appreciate their excellence in evaluating the participants). But I felt exhausted anyway, though satisfied. The ASA Junior was made possible thanks to the collaboration of Yamaha, to which I was appointed its Brand Ambassador. The winners are all from Surabaya, and the surprising fact is that they all come from the same institution AND teacher, that is Rosalinawati Iman (brava!). I must honestly say that Rosalinawati is for me a newcomer, I just heard about her last year, when some of her students won in another piano competition.Her students show both mastery of techniques and high musicianship and understanding. Ayunia Indri Saputro won the Junior Category, while the Elementary & Little Elementary was won by the brothers Hagen and Hamond Rahardjo. And then the Piano Duet category (which didn't attract that many attention apparently) was won from 2 young pianists from Medan, Carina Surya & Josephine Tjuatja. ............................................................................................................................................... A special note I'd like to dedicate to Michael Anthony, an 11-y.o. blind and autist child who reached the 9th rank among the finalists. He touched the audience's hearts, especially when he played my birthday piece I wrote for my daughter Alicia when she was 11. He proved that if you really love something, you can get it. There's no excuse. I wish that "something" could be changed into "someone". :( ............................................................................................................................................... Now we focus on the 2014 Ananda Sukarlan Award, the tough one. So tough that many have compared it with "The Hunger Games", therefore I'd wish our future participants "May the odds be ever in your favor!". A tough repertory too for the Senior category : they are asked to choose between my 8th and 10th Rapsodia Nusantara to be played in the final round; virtuosically speaking, they would just be the same! And it is indeed, unfortunately, like that sad ABBA song, The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall. In fact, we never want it to be like that, but a piano (and therefore any other instrument) competition is a reflection, or a taste, of a real life competition, where the winner indeed takes it all. The losers do NOT have to fall, as we could see in our previous competitions, but it was the winners that have proven their musical values in this tough world of piano music. Inge Buniardi (2008 winner) just toured Russia and gave her debut at the Carnegie Hall while now pursuing her Doctorate at the University of Kansas, Edith Widayani (2010) is going around giving concerts too (she'll go to Bogota Piano Festival sometime next month) while receiving scholarship for her Master's at the prestigious Eastman School of Music at this moment, and our youngest winner (2012) Randy Ryan was just accepted at the Juilliard School of Music. Not a bad future at all for Indonesia's classical music! ............................................................................................................................................. Last Saturday night I was partying with Edith, Randy and Stephanie Onggowinoto (both Randy & Stephanie in fact shared the 3rd prize at ASA 2008, 4 years before Randy won the 1st prize, at last, in 2012) and their lovely families at Mr. Budi Sabini's residence. We missed Inge Buniardi as she's having a holiday in Europe now. It was a really nice party, with great food and wine too, and it's been such a long time that I enjoyed a purely musical party like that. The last one I remembered was during my student days! We talked only about music, played piano in turns, and Edith & Randy even played each a half of Schumann's Carnaval. This is also the first time in years that I enjoyed playing the piano in a party. Anyway, I just realized that I have written short pieces, for both Inge and Edith's (who played hers in the party) birthday presents, not only as 1st prize winners (it wasn't written anywhere that the 1st prizewinner will have to suffer a piece from me!) but as great musicians and great friends they've turned out to be in the post-ASA period. So, I owed one to Randy and I promised him to write one. I wouldn't wait for his birthday, which is coincidentally almost the same as mine: his is June 9, and mine is June 10. I got already a vague concept of the piece during the party, a piece using his name, with a basso ostinato borrowing from Michael Jackson's Thriller, which is my all time favorite song (Randy's name generated a rhythmically funky piece which reminded me of that really catchy Thriller basso ostinato). On my way home I read the lyrics of Thriller, you know, about "the beast that is about to strike and no one's gonna save you", and that gave me the idea of writing not a Prelude & Fugue but the other way around. In fact, the Fugue would serve as a Prelude to the beast that is about to strike. I was happy that that piece was written down (I think the happiness was also due to the mix of the Australian wine I had in the party plus the Scotch whisky I took in my appt. before composing). I tweeted at 1.23 a.m when I finished the Fugue, and at 2.18 I finished the postlude, and sent Randy, Edith & Steph directly, since I put their names in the score too, as a remembrance of that really cool party ... and a hope that we'd repeat it again soon. We work hard, but we party hard too!