A relaxed 'n productive week

Woohoo, it's been more than 1 month since I blogged! Here I am, back home in the hills of Cantabria. Last week (the 10th of November) we did something which was quite new and unique for the Indonesian classical music scene : with the financial support of the Indonesian Embassy in Madrid and the BNI Bank in London, I gathered 4 Indonesian young musicians who are in their last years in their higher musical educations in Europe, and we played together in Madrid. So, 5 of us played under the "Diaspora" Project, at the "Amaniel" Conservatory of Music in Madrid in front of a packed hall. We didn't only play music. I introduced 2 of them (guitarrist John Paul and violinist Amelia Tionanda) to 2 Spanish composers, David del Puerto (John Paul played his Nocturne & Toccata) and Santiago Lanchares (Amelia and me played his 3 short pieces "Momentos") so they could meet and work together. The other Indonesians were Grace Petrona (violist) and flutist Ratna Indira. And then I played some interludes of Jesus Rueda. The 3 composers came to the concert, and of course that fact alone attracted much interest, since they are the most popular composers here of today. It was a unique event, both for Spain and for Indonesia's classical music world. I also played 2 of my Rapsodia Nusantara, and apparently no. 10 (the one based on the Balinese song JANGER) captured the audience's interest the most, as I made the piano sound like a Balinese gamelan. Our ambassador, the lovely Mme. Adityawidi Adiwoso also came, and I am so thankful to her, and to our attaché Mr. Theodorus Nugroho and others from the Embassy who share the same vision about promoting Indonesia through its classical music. And, we all had fun, at least I had with the young musicians, and young people always recharge my battery. .............................................................................................................................................. Back home, I have 12 days before leaving to Mexico for some lectures and masterclasses. I am supposed to start practising Poulenc's Sextet for piano and winds these 12 days, since I am gonna perform it with the wind players of the Boston Symphony Orchestra next December, but I found myself too lazy to practice. Apart from that, some things occured and they gave me excuses to write music. One, is that our Indonesian Classical Music Foundation (Yayasan Musik Sastra Indonesia) is going to make a fund-raising concert at the residence of one of our patrons, Mrs. Pia Alisjahbana, on December 15th. Since it's near Christmas, we'd call it a "Christmas Concert". Now, I gotta think of a X-mas-ish theme for this concert, so I decided to write a set of variations on "Silent Night". This piece will be auctioned during that concert, and the highest bidder will get his / her name (or the name of someone (s)he wishes to dedicate to) printed above the title, when the music is published. You know, just check the scores of Beethoven's or Haydn's Sonatas or even Chopin's Ballade, and you'll see the name of the sponsor or patron of those pieces. .............................................................................................................................................. While in Madrid last week, the guitarrist John Paul told me that he also will perform in a fund-raising concert in Jakarta for the poor people in the slum areas of Jakarta, and he invited me to come. It's a free concert, but of course we had to donate something. Now,  I honestly think I should focus on my own foundation, also working with poor people, so I told him that instead of donating money, I'd donate a piece, for the same purpose of my piece written for my foundation. He will perform the piece together with the soprano Jessica Josephine Januar (nice initials, eh, that triple J) and hope someone would pay for this piece, which then the money would be destined to those people who need it. This piece would make a nice pair with my older piece for soprano and guitar, Twilite : By the Seaside. ..............................................................................................................................................   While the "Silent Night" Variations (I might change the title into something more fancy) took me a few days to compose, John Paul's piece was written almost instantaneously. I was coincidentally reading my book of Walt Whitman's short poems, and I stumbled (again) on a beautiful love poem, To a Stranger, and music just popped out from it. I remember last month I also made music from another Whitman short poem, O you whom I often and silently come, also from the same collection of poems. It was written for Nikodemus Lukas, the junior male voice winner of the national voice competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" this year. He's gonna record a CD with many songs of mine, with me on the piano. Both Whitman poems were so powerful that I felt I didn't have to invent the music, the combination of words already produced the music itself. And I didn't even remember anything while writing them, it was like having sex : you just enjoy it and suddenly it's over. And I even wrote both of them in bed, so the comparison with sex is more appropriate, eh? Whitman's poems have that scary seductive power on you. If they were real people, I'd already have children with all of them. ..............................................................................................................................................    Ah I also finished my own Piano Sextet that I started on the plane coming back to Spain from Jakarta, a few days before our fun Madrid concert, which will be premiered with my Boston Symphony friends. It's a short humorous piece, a kind of Rapsodia Nusantara but for Sextet, using a theme of a Sundanese folksong coupled with Mozart's. Which ones, I'm not gonna tell you for now. The title is longer than the piece : Mozart's Transit in Java before leaving to Boston to meet Beethoven. And in fact, before starting the Sextet on the plane, I wrote a short piano piece for the birthday present of Lina Chan, a good friend of mine in Jakarta. The motif of this piece is based on her name: LINA (La(A)-B-G-A), and it has a very different character than my Sextet. It's amazing for myself to realize that 2 pieces, written only separated by a dinner, can have such different character. Her birthday is on November 10th, so I emailed Chendra my manager after I landed and asked him to give the piece to Lina right on the 10th. The piece took its character from a poem by Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty, like the Night, which I read while waiting for boarding the plane. And it fits Lina, since she's a beautiful lady. You are what you eat, but apparently you are also what you read. So, not a bad month after all. .............................................................................................................................................. If you wanna come to our concert with the Boston Symphony friends, please just contact my manager, Chendra, at ycep@yahoo.com or +62 818 891038. The concert is on the 14th of December, and apart from the Poulenc sextet and the premiere of mine, we will do some duos and trios of my music which are based on the book "Metamorphosis" by Ovid, such as Rescuing Ariadne (flute and piano) and Niobe Weeping, while turning into Stone (french horn and piano). You can tweet me at @anandasukarlan if you wanna know more about this concert (or about anything else of my life!).