Suharto is dead. So ... ?

Well, well, well, I couldn't believe that our former dictator could fall ill ... and then die. In fact, I have been thinking a lot about him, since I am writing this opera about a family who lost one of its members during Suharto's dictatorship. It has a lot to do with methods of kidnapping and torture.

But let's talk about Suharto - "The Smiling Dictator". Does this news mean that his family will now be liberated from all the charges ? I think so. It has happened before, and unfortunately it will always happen with all those "happy" dictators in every part of the world. "Live long and prosper", full of privileges, possessing absolute power (he and his entire family). Why is this ? How many people has he killed ...ooops, sorry, I mean, made disappear ? Even the magician David Copperfield couldn't compete with him. I won't speculate how many victims of Suharto there were, since I can't know it for sure (and neither did he, I suppose. He didn't even care ... or perhaps the numbers of victims were important to boost his ego ?) .

So, now not only is he f***ing rich, but his death is boosting his fame as well. He'll be the most bankable dead celebrity, after Elvis. A pity for him that all that money and wealth can't be transferred to the next world. The wealth earned with so much blood of innocent people ...

Paths and highways

Am enjoying immensely practising the complete ballet of "Castor & Pollux" by one of my favorite composers, Santiago Lanchares. It is a work for piano & percussion (I will do it with my friend, the number one, second to none percussionist Miquel Bernat), 40 minutes of brilliant, exhilarating, inexhaustibly driving rhythmical work. We will do the complete work (12 episodes) for the first time in 3 weeks time in Portugal, and during the next season we will do it several times with the famous choreographer Dani Panullo in Madrid and several other cities.

The combination of piano and percussion produces a fascinating sound world ; especially in this ballet Lanchares uses 90% only marimba and vibraphone. The range of the character of the sound it produces is so wide, from the dark low register of the marimba to the ear-piercing resonating sounds of the combination of the piano and vibraphone. The dynamic range is also astonishingly wide, as well as their colourful sound palette and textures. Sometimes Miquel Bernat plays those two instruments simultaneously, each with one hand (that's a technique that he has developed through the years). You can hear the results of Miquel playing both instruments in http://www.youtube.com/ , if you search for Santiago Lanchares' name , where "Lamento de Pollux" is shown with the film by another friend of us, Chendra Panatan.

There is of course the problem of balance of loudness, since those percussion instruments are by nature louder than the piano, but Santiago Lanchares could deal with it in a clever way . He is, I consider, the best composer for piano coming from Spain of today together with Jesus Rueda. But Rueda takes his influence from the romantic tradition broken after Rachmaninov (although Rueda has many highly imaginative works for percussion ; in fact Miquel and his group "Drumming" will record a whole CD of his percussion works next year), and Lanchares follows the percussive path of Bartok and Britten. So, two composers each walking on their own paths, and the artistic result is equally valid and of the highest quality. Meanwhile, there are some music dictators out there who are "metaphorically killing" (a quote from Times magazine) future generation of composers who didn't follow their (presumably one and only) path. Even some of those dictators just ORDER other people to follow their path, while they themselves don't walk through it ; they don't compose, just dictate !!!
It reminds me of the period of Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, when they built one highway to connect two cities. One HAS to pass through that one and only highway if you want to arrive at his destination. And of course he has to pay the toll . Now, what can Suharto do now with all that money ? I wonder ....