Tumirah interrupted ... gladly. And RIP David Bowie

Woohoo, I received a God-given excuse to interrupt the composition of my opera, Tumirah, Sang Mucikari ! The opera's vocal and piano score is almost finished, I just have to orchestrate it which will take a few weeks. But I feel my brain rather exhausted from it, and was feeling like taking a small break without feeling guilty about it ... and voila! ............................................................................................................................................. The young rising star poet Adimas Immanuel contacted me last week that he is having his new book of poem launched by publisher GRAMEDIA next month. He was happy that the also rising soprano star Mariska Setiawan (I guess they are of the same age, around 24-25?) has recorded my music based on one of his poems in her first CD. Since Mariska came to Jakarta for the Jakarta New Year Concert last week (she normally lives in Surabaya), all 3 of us made an appointment to meet very late after the concert. When I said "very", it means like eerrr ... almost 11 p.m., in a restaurant near my apartment. This photo was taken during that meeting, which was so inspiring and went on and on until very late ... or shall I say early? Adimas asked us if we would like to do (meaning: make music of) some of his poems for the launching event, and Mariska and me didn't think twice to accept it. And so, he emailed us both the softcopy of his new book, and both Mariska and me got the privilige to be the first readers (outside his publishers) of his new book, 1 month before its official launching! Of course we are "under oath" not to forward it to anybody else, since Adimas is now one of the hottest property of Indonesian literature at the moment and the launch of a new poetry collection is something that is much looked forward to. Everything happens very quickly. A few days later Gramedia had a meeting with my manager Chendra, and everything is set to be done for next month. ............................................................................................................................................. And so we are in the middle of the compositional process which is fun and unique, since to begin with, most of the poems are inspired by paintings. Therefore, setting them to music is a second step of the artistic transformation: from painting to poetry, and from poetry to music. So Mariska and I discuss a poem (and the painting that inspired each of them) every night before she sleeps. By the way, she sleeps "normally" as most of human beings do: around midnight. So we pick a random poem (like me, she is also a literature freak), talk about it, agree whether to set it to music (or not) and after she falls asleep I start to work on a chosen one until about 3-4 a.m. I then email the finished music just before sunrise before I walk a bit around the swimming pool and then sleep, so she wakes up and finds the music to learn it during the morning and gives me some feedbacks. Oh, the beauty of technology! Poor Brahms or Schumann couldn't do these kinda things with their singers. It's really a fun and inspiring way to write music. And I learn a lot from Mariska too. The human voice is a neverending mystery to reveal. Since Mariska is also a pop singer -- and a damn good pop-songwriter too, I feel a good connection, since I am a huge fan of many of her heroes, such as The Beach Boys, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson .... and from her I start to appreciate the great art of David Bowie, may he Rest in Peace. What a way to leave the world, with his latest farewell song Lazarus ... and dying from cancer at the age of a Cancer symbol, 69. ............................................................................................................................................. The concert and launch of Adimas' new book Di Hadapan Rahasia (Facing a Secret), plus the World Premiere of my new song cycle "Rangkaian Rahasia Untuk Mariska" (A chain of secrets for Mariska) will take place at Teater Kecil, Taman Ismail Marzuki, on Wednesday the 17th of February. We still discuss the time it should start, since there are many things happening there: book signing, a small discussion with some snacks and about 1 hour of concert, not only with the songs, but with some Rapsodia Nusantara as well. Please just contact my office Ananda Sukarlan Center for more info and details : ycep@yahoo.com or 0818 891038 (WA or sms too).

A literary festival which is not only literary

It's been quite an inspiring half a week! The 2nd ASEAN Literary Festival was held in Jakarta, visited by literary figures from 20 countries. I am honoured to be invited to give a half-an-hour concert for the opening, which also include some poetry reading by Indonesian prominent poet Khrisna Pabichara and a speech by Dr. Ma Thida, a writer and human rights activist from Myanmar who spent many years in prison for "endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations, and distributing unlawful literature." .............................................................................................................................................. The program director of this highly inspiring festival is Okky Madasari, the awardwinning writer famous for her novels about (the lack of) human rights. She designed this year's festival as a tribute to Sitor Situmorang, Indonesia's great poet who died less than 100 days ago. Since Sitor is one of my favorite poets, I have written a few songs based on his poems, but then I wrote a new one, (and a looong one by the way!) based on his masterpiece, La Ronde. It is one of the most erotic poems ever done in Indonesia literature, and written so subtly and exquisitely. It was in fact written for tenor and harp, since I felt that the harp represents more the sound that was triggered by the poem in my head, but unfortunately the young harpist partner of the tenor (Nikodemus Lukas, who sang so beautifully) had some examinations at those dates. Yeah, Jessica Sudarta the harpist is only 16, and her school makes her too busy. So I adapted the harp part for the piano and played it myself accompanying Niko. But they will record that work this year, so I am very much looking forward to it. Niko and I then perform my older songs based on poems by Sitor, and apparently many members of the audience made video recordings of them (yeah, it's so easy to do it nowadays!) and even uploaded them on youtube. This is one of them : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZBQs9YVaa0 .............................................................................................................................................. What made me happy about this is that at last the relationship between (classical) music and literature in Indonesia is now re-established. Since the death of composers such as Mochtar Embut and F.X. Sutopo (who wrote songs based on poems by W.S. Rendra etc) in the 1970s and 80s, these two artistic fields didn't meet anymore. I continued the tradition without even being aware that it was cut, since I live in Europe, where composers keep on composing based on existing poems or other literary forms since the 19th century (as you know, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann were the pioneers in doing this). You might ask, what do we, composers, contribute to those poems that are already so highly expressive? Well, music enhances words with emotional energy that speech alone cannot convey. But obviously, there is more to it than this! We in Indonesia have a beautiful term for this art: Tembang Puitik (Poetic Song, which differentiates it from other songs whose texts are written by the songwriter himself). Therefore it strives to be the perfect combination of music and literature, based on four elements: poet, composer, singer and accompanist. The composer uses the full resources of the art form to embellish the poet's text, sometimes even realizing potential interpretations that were not explicit in the poet's words. In a well-realized Poetic Song, the composer creates a duet between the accompanist and the vocalist, so an accompanist's job is not merely "accompanying" with nice rhythms and chords. That is, the poetic song paints for us a picture of what the poet might have envisioned. The performance of an poetic song literally breathes life into this picture through a complementary, coordinated partnership among the four significant elements. .............................................................................................................................................. Now I have written around 120 songs based on Indonesian poems, and another 60 or 70 on poems of Whitman, Browning and other foreign writers. In fact, I started to write those Indonesian songs in 2006 after having written many songs in English and Spanish, and now I feel really comfortable in composing on poems of my mother tongue. And I met new literary friends in this great festival, and I discovered the works by young writers such as Adimas Immanuel and Bernard Batubara so I am looking forward to write something based on their works. I also met long-time-no-see great poets Hasan Aspahani and Joko Pinurbo. .............................................................................................................................................. My latest poetic songs are included in my CD "An Essay on Love", sung by Widhawan Aryo Praditha, Theodora Amabel Beatrice and Niko as well. If you are interested in it, please tweet me at @anandasukarlan .