RIP Sitor Situmorang, and my deepest apologies

If I have to regret one thing this year, perhaps it is the death of the great poet Sitor Situmorang, and what I have (not) done. You see, I set to music several poems of his, and in my newest CD "An Essay on Love" I recorded two of them : Malam Kebumen (Kebumen Night) and Surat Kertas Hijau (Green Paper Letters, which is one of his most well known poems). Sitor has been living in Holland for many years now. I told him last month (November), through his wife, that we were going to release the CD in mid December, and of course they were very keen in receiving the CD. Sitor himself had listened to some of my music based on his poems, either live or through the only existing online recording of it, sung by Samuel Tandei : http://wuol.org/tenor-samuel-tandei/ . In the CD they were sung by Widhawan Aryo Pradhita, who has been famous overnight last week for his great, I mean reaaallly great, interpretation as the policeman in CLARA. In fact, now after watching him live and through youtube, and read the raving reviews on the media on him, people buys the CD and ask "in which songs / tracks does Clara's policeman sing?" .............................................................................................................................................. Now, the CDs themselves have been finished in print a week prior to the world premiere of CLARA. But that was the busiest week for us all, me, Chendra and all staff of The Ananda Sukarlan Center. The rehearsals took so much time, especially with the complex music, choreography and stage settings ... and to add them all up into a whole show! So, we just ignored that pile of CDs in our office and did nothing with them, although people had ordered them from all around Indonesia. Anyway, it was supposed to be officially launched during CLARA, where our former President of the Republic, Mr. BJ Habibie was invited but still was sick and gotta cancel all public appearances, even until today. So, as usual, things could wait, and people could wait for it too .... until yesterday, that we received the news of the death of the great poet, and realized that death could NOT wait. Anyway, I wasn't aware that he has been sick. In fact, I wasn't aware about anything else during the preparation of CLARA and even a few days afterwards. The only people I talked to are those who are involved in CLARA. And so, the CDs which were sent to the poets were sent a few days after the premiere of CLARA .... and one of them arrived too late to be listened to by its poet. .............................................................................................................................................. Apparently Sitor Situmorang wasn't just sick. He refused to go out of his appartment for the last few months, and his weight had dropped to a mere 37 kilograms. I remember, when I met him for the first time like 4 years ago, I had the same sensation as when I met Indonesia's great composer Amir Pasaribu. Both have been rejected by our own country, both had to live in exile by the same regime. There is that look in their eyes, the look of ... suspicion? .. , but mixed with a kind of love and pain. Perhaps that's the effect of hypersensitive people being inflicted by violence and suffering. Sitor spent 8 dark years in prison without trial right after the rise of Suharto, and certainly the scars of that period remain open until now. Suharto and the New Order era erased the names of a number of intellectuals and writers, including Sitor, from textbooks because they were considered left-wing. However, Sitor kept the line clear between the regime and the country he loves. Sitor was always faithful and sincere in defending his country and nation. He was 91 when he died. It is now OUR task to put him in his prominent place in Indonesian history, as one of our greatest poets who has inspired many people, me included. Requiescat in Pace, Requiem Aeternam, Sitor Situmorang.

Fun (and not so fun) Facts on CLARA

Thank God the premiere of CLARA went very well. All my artistic worries proved to be unnecessary, since I got great support from Chendra Panatan who had done an impressive concept of choreography, stage decor and even lighting (to those who don't know, he also studied stage lighting with one of the best experts in the world, Jennifer Tipton from New York). His spectacular visual art could dissimulate all the shortcomings in my music! Anyway, as any live performances, there are things that have gone wrong, but hey, that's the beauty of live performances, eh? Since then, many reporters, music students, or just curious friends asked me about things in CLARA, so I guess I just share all those here. Let's consider this "Everything you wanna know about Clara and are afraid to ask", hehehe .... .............................................................................................................................................. G minor is the predominant tonality throughout the whole opera. Not only it is easy to be played on string instruments, but it is also the minor paralel of B-flat, which I usually employ to express love (such as in my song Dalam Doaku). Since hatred is the theme of this opera, I employed this tonality coz as we say, love and hate are just two sides of a coin. .............................................................................................................................................. Clara's original car in Seno Gumira's story is a BMW. But we couldn't find a BMW from the year around 1998, so we got a Mercedes instead. Luckily, the word Mer-Ce-Des has the same amount of syllables as B-M-W , and they even share the pronounciation similarities in Indonesia. So, that's how we changed it into a Mercedes. We borrowed it from a friend of mine at highschool, Prasodjo, who is also the founder of Jakarta Drum School, whose drummers participated (and became one of the highlight of the opera!) in CLARA. .............................................................................................................................................. In all my music the materials, which might be motifs, or "inspiration" if you wanna say it in a cool term, can come from anywhere, anything or anybody. There is one motif, sung by the Policeman in my opera CLARA, which is made from the figure of a penis. It consists of figure A and B: A is 2 adjacent notes (mostly with an interval of a major second) and then B is another 2 notes with a pretty "sizeable" interval. The first two of course reflects the 2 balls, and the real penis is the last two notes. This is employed when the police is feeling horny. The B part can vary their interval, especially if it depicts the growing erection of the penis. The last, largest and most obvious use of this motif is in the policeman's last aria, where he sings "Ayolah sana, tidur" (Come on, sleep). .............................................................................................................................................. I was very much pressed in time in writing CLARA, but during its actual composition I managed to write Two lullabies for piano. The last one was written on the 19th of November, the birthday of my daughter Alicia, since I just got the news (in this internet era is there still a belated news? Yeah, yeah if you are immersed in writing an opera!) about the birth of Daphne Gabriella Irawan, daughter of my good friend Catherine Tanujaya (founder of The Piano Institute in Surabaya) and her husband "Hungry" Jeff (he owns a restaurant hehehe). But in fact, her daughter was born exactly on the same day of Darleen Kristianto, daughter of my highly admired pianist friend Henoch Kristianto, and since I knew about his daughter the same day (even hour!) of her birth, I wrote her lullaby on her birth, 31st of October. In fact, since she was born in the morning, I sent the lullaby in the evening, so it's so valid being a welcoming present to Darleen, eh? And those lullabies gave me a flash of happiness, having finished being written in just 1 or 2 hours, while CLARA was written in months! And it's good to write 2 lullabies at a space of 19 days, if I had written it on the same day they would both sound almost the same! .............................................................................................................................................. You know that popular website www.moviemistakes.com . Well, I am giving away our own bloopers here. There were two HUGE accidents during the second show of Clara. One, you might wonder what the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" were doing during the 2 minutes before Clara was raped, right? Well, Clara's and her dad's microphone didn't work during that song at the second show. She should have sung a counter-melody on top of Beach Boys' melody. So, "God Only Knows" just passed by for 2 minutes without anything happening.Yeah, it wasn't easy to write those polyphonic stuff on top of their gorgeous song, and thanks to the bloody sound technician, it turne to be an epic fail! Luckily someone videotaped a clip from the first show, you can sort of grab my idea here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQMtuiqMVYc .............................................................................................................................................. - Another accident was the old (wo)man who fell off the steps of the police station. It was an accident! It wasn't in the scenario! But Mislam, the actor who fell, improvised that fall brilliantly that it added a touch of humor in this otherwise dark and gloomy show of 1 hour 10 minutes. By the way, this old woman also symbolizes someone who is "different" in our society, just like the Chinese descendants. It was made unclear whether it was a he or she, but we want to accentuate his/her kind heart. Just like the Chinese, everyone who are born different may be born to be hated, although they have a heart just like the rest of us. Sometimes better, even. .............................................................................................................................................. Originally the production was for 1 night only, which is on the 14th of December. But 1 month before the premiere, tickets were selling very well, and so the organizers decided to open another show. Since the 15th happened to be a Monday, not a good day for shows in Jakarta as the city with the most congested traffic in the world, they decided for the 13th. I was against that idea, since I am very superstitious (read my entry http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-truth-about-number-121.html ). But look, apparently the accidents happened on the 14th! .............................................................................................................................................. The role of Clara's Father was originally for Nikodemus Lukas, a 19-year-young (perhaps too young to be a daddy) tenor who has sung many of my music and even recorded them for the CD "An Essay on Love", but for personal problems he resigned just a bit less than 3 weeks before the premiere. In the middle of a panic situation, we got Ivan Subuhwanto, a more mature tenor. Fortunately he is also familiar with some of my music, so he knew what he was facing! The poor guy had to learn all my crazy tunes in that short time. He was of course in a panic attack, but he managed to do his job very well, and I am sure that if we perform CLARA again he would excel brilliantly. .............................................................................................................................................. Last but not least, is that the ending of CLARA was concieved 4 days before its premiere! Chendra realized that visually it wasn't stunning enough to have the duet between Clara and her father to end it. So he devised the "Blood Tears" scene that lasts for 2'30" . And of course he asked me without hesitation "Could you please write 2'30" of music tonight so we can rehearse it tomorrow". So after arriving at my appartment at midnight, I had to write music with motifs taken from the post-raping music as the ending, finished at 3.30 a.m just to wake up a few hours later at 8 a.m to rehearse with the singers. If you think this is extreme, then you don't know that Mozart wrote the Overture for his Don Giovanni THE MORNING of the world premiere!