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).

Beat It, Michael Jackson. (A tribute)

This year marks the 5th year of the death of Michael Jackson. For me he's probably THE musician of the 20th century, together with Igor Stravinsky (Stravinsky wasn't even born in the 20th century) who I admire the most of that fascinating century. He was a symbol of perfection in everything he did. I admire him not only as a musician, but of course as a dancer as well, and he will be long, very long remembered for these 2 fields in his art. If Stravinsky revolutionized classical music, then MJ revolutionized pop music. Both with the elements of the music itself : the melodies (sometimes so simple : like those simple ones in IS's Rite of Spring and MJ's They Don't Care about Us). Still listening to him, I thought it's just appropriate to write a few lines about him in this month, June, of his assasination, 5 years ago. Dr. Conrad Murray, who had been caring for the pop star at the time of his death, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter on November 7, 2011, later receiving a four-year prison sentence. .............................................................................................................................................. I remember the first thing of him that took my breath away was in fact not his music, but something else. Here's the scene: Michael Jackson, dressed in white suit and hat like a gangster guardian angel walks into a bar full of thugs, gamblers, and flappers, the music stops and everyone stares at him; he reaches for a gun - no, it's just a quarter, which he flips all the way across room where it slides perfectly into a jukebox coin slot. The song starts with a synthesized crash: As he came into the window / it was the sound of a crescendo....You've been hit by a Smooth Criminal. Dancing, fighting, dramatic pauses, a weird slow-motion interlude, and more dancing and fighting follow. Then it happened: Michael gives a smile, tilts his hat, and leans. Yes, he LEANS. He leans an amazing, impossible lean. It seems so simple but it's just. so. cool. When I saw it for the first time on screen, it was surely the coolest thing I had ever seen on TV. Later I believe he received a patent for the special device he used to do it. .............................................................................................................................................. But then of course his musical side was the thing that attracted me the most. Those riffs in Billie Jean, Bad and Thriller are just amazing ; they are the predecessors of the rhythms of today's Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and even Shakira. The album "Thriller" alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It," and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." There are until now two works of mine that paid tribute to MJ : one is that short piece Thriller Fugue & Postlude (based on the name "Randy Ryan", my young pianist friend who's now studying at the Juilliard School in New York), and Vivaldi's Winter of Discontent (based on the music of Vivaldi's Winter, and a MJ-ish ostinato bass. In fact that ostinato was made up by myself, but it certainly wouldn't have existed without MJ's music. If you wanna listen to it, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1IeZfMRKI ). .............................................................................................................................................. It's been 5 years, but it seems a long time that we have missed a really fresh, innovative and daring kind of music. Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson.

Foreword to Alicia's 4th Piano Book

Yup, it's now being printed! We plan to release it in about 2 weeks time. This is what I wrote for the introduction. .............................................................................................................................................. Although practically all of the pieces in this book are not for my daughter anymore (to play on the piano), she still plays an important role as my muse and inspirer. You see, Alicia is now 15, and we can talk about things of the adults : friendships, relationships ... and romance. Yup, as a 15-year-young lady, she already has her shares of the beauty and pain of love and passion. It's only nowadays, during our loooong and intense conversations through the night, that I find the real beauty and meaning of life. That beauty that can't be exchanged with all the success, money or anything else in this world. 5 years ago I wouldn't believe that I could learn so much about life from my very young Alicia. And yet she belongs to a generation that tweets, being immersed in their smartphones during a big chunk of the day and have short attention spans. Even the pop music written today are much simpler then those written during my generation to adapt to the limited musical brain of today's generation. No more poignant recitatives of Whitney Houston or Queen. No more breathtaking harmonies of The Beatles. And of course, goodbye to those incredible riffs n rhythmic inventions of Michael Jackson. Alicia, like her friends, listens to the pop music of today. And yet, she has so many inside her to inspire and teach me. .............................................................................................................................................. Therefore, pieces like "Call me but love .." (this is the longest, and perhaps most complex piece in this book) was born from our conversations, analyzing the balcony scene of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, when we delved into the theme of passion and the whole divine madness. The title came from the lines of Romeo, responding to Juliet's : .............................................................................................................................................. O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet. .............................................................................................................................................. And Romeo answered : Call me but love, and I'll be new baptis'd; Henceforth I never will be Romeo. .............................................................................................................................................. Many of the pieces here are also written for friends either for a special event in their lives, or just because I wanna write them, because I believe that everyone that came to my life is there for a reason. And my music is the manifesto of that reason, since it is thanks to those dedicatees that I could give birth to the music. Therefore, Alicia's 4th piano book is more like a collection of my short piano pieces, a musical diary of my day-to-day life, sometimes with no educational purposes in mind. Unlike my longer pieces, the pieces in this book are more intuitively written, therefore I don't really think about their technical difficulties. It is thanks to pianist Henoch Kristianto who has recorded most of my piano music (including many of them in this book, and all of my heavily virtuosic Rapsodia Nusantara, yes, all of them!) and his team at the Clavier Music Academy that these pieces are now graded according to their pianistic levels of difficulty. He even found pedagogic values and educative purposes in those pieces! I will leave you now with his words while he worked on them. And thank you again to all of you who have made the music in the previous Alicia's Piano Books part of your musical life. Hope you all still enjoy studying these modest pieces, either for educational or teaching purposes, repertoire for your concerts, or just for plain fun playing them at home during rainy days :) . .............................................................................................................................................. Ananda Sukarlan, April 2014. .............................................................................................................................................. Introduction by Henoch Kristianto .............................................................................................................................................. Those who were fortunate enough to hear Ananda Sukarlan's piano music in live performance would agree that his music is very close to the ears of his Indonesian listeners or those who are Indonesian at heart. It cannot be disputed that his compositions comprise the greatest variety, from the deepest pathos to most sparkling humor. As a prolific performing pianist and composer of variations, rhapsodies and other small-scale works for piano, Sukarlan claimed that he always felt more at home when composing his vocal works. Perhaps due to this personal preference, you may find many of the pieces in this Alicia book very "cantabile" in the sense that they are very much singable. This feature of course is an excellent tool for the musical development of any young pianists. Intended primarily for the cultivated amateur, these works are abound in attractive melodic ideas and brilliant instrumental writing. Indeed, their study will lead to higher realms of imagination and it shall prepare for all that can be found in piano literature. ~Henoch Kristianto

When the black turned white (RIP Michael Jackson)

This morning, woken up and chased by the deadline of my piece for percussion and piano to be performed at the Meloritmos Festival in 3 weeks time, I am deeply saddened by the news of the passing away of my idol, Michael Jackson. He has certainly done to the 20th century world of music what Gustav Mahler did for the 19th century. Yeah, they are 2 different genres of music, but who is more influential to the music world in the fin-de-siecle period? How many composers (I mean "classical" ones) have been influenced by MJ ? I remembered talking passionately about MJ's music with 2 great figures, the late Sir Michael Tippett and Louis Andriessen (both of whose music have also influenced mine and my way of thinking). If you hear the "rap music" section in Tippett's opera NEW YEAR, well that was thanks to MJ. And I made my own version of rap music in my opera IBU--yang anaknya diculik itu, also thanks to MJ, in particular his Smooth Criminal. Two different versions, two different interpretations. Just two. I imagine there might be another ..10? 100? That is, I guess, what Stravinsky called "Music about music". And that proves just how rich MJ's music is and how he performed them, with his particular voice, body movements and style.
I can't help thinking about who, in my opinion, is the greatest figure of music in the second half of the 20th century. I won't agree if it were the Beatles, since their music is just "nice" and "beautiful" (which are 2 important elements as well!), but I doubt in the strength of the impact in the artistic world. You know what I mean, this posh circle of operas and contemporary classical music. If Mahler and Britten and especially Stravinsky were still alive, they won't be that immune from the strong influence of MJ, I bet you.
MJ's music has boldly gone where no man has gone before. RIP, Michael Jackson. I will always love you. And your music.