A Few Words Without Music, from the artistic director

My dear fellow musicians, Welcome to the G20 Orchestra, and for my non-Indonesian colleagues, welcome to our beautiful country! If you are here where you are today, it means not only that your musicianship and professionalism are highly valued, but also your willingness to embrace other cultures, to work together, to accept, tolerate and cherish differences and to communicate through means higher than just words and languages. We don't build orchestras. We build people, build their character, empathy, artistic & aesthetic values, discipline and hard work, sense of brother & sisterhood, capabilities of bridging even uniting differences. Only then the orchestra can be formed. .................................................................................................................................................. When the G20 Indonesia and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research & Technology officially asked me to build this orchestra early this year, I told them that I don't want to build just another orchestra, not even for a 4.0 era. I want a 5.0 orchestra, a group of people with a higher conscience, deeper understanding of moral and rational goodness in humans that perfectly integrate with technology (for the arts, especially social media and its algorithms). That is why I insisted in gender equality and the age restriction for the members of the orchestra. I would like to quote the statement by Elon Musk at "Insider", CNBC. It is perhaps politically incorrect, but hey since I'm such an unpolitical person, I will quote it anyway : .................................................................................................................................................. “I don't think we should try to have people live for a really long time. It would cause asphyxiation of society because the truth is, most people don't change their mind. They just die. So if they don't die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn't advance.” .................................................................................................................................................. The G20 Orchestra is literally a millenial orchestra and I hope it would change how the world perceives classical music, which basically hasn't changed in more than 100 years. Even the word "conservatory" for a music faculty is, for me, unfitting since it implies the unwillingness for change and development. In G20 Orchestra women and men have the same power, but not different generations. It is the millenials that hold the most power here: the power to express and the power to tell the older generations about history and how we should advance or (not) repeat it, through a medium which is the most powerful of all: music. Let us show that music is not just nice melodies, rhythms and harmonies, but a vehicle more powerful than words to tell stories and our deepest feelings. .................................................................................................................................................. Musically yours, .................................................................................................................................................. Ananda Sukarlan .................................................................................................................................................. Artistic Director of G20 Orchestra .................................................................................................................................................. twitter & instagram @anandasukarlan