September's just gone

September has passed, and it's been a super-busy month, although it seems like I was enjoying life. The month opened with my concert with the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra in Jakarta, and joining my friend, the conductor Addie MS we performed Yazeed Djamin's masterpiece, "Variation on the song Sepasang Mata Bola" as well as the short "Warsaw Concerto" by Richard Addinsell. The theme Sepasang Mata Bola is from an old song by the late popular songwriter Ismail Marzuki, written during the war years. Yazeed managed to elaborate that song into a 23-minute sort of piano concerto, which is not easy, considering that the tune itself is so complete in itself. I was even told that Ismail Marzuki couldn't read n write notes, so obviously he didn't think of melodic motifs and all those "intellectual" ways of writing music. In fact, that's the thing that he did best: writing beautiful lyrics and long, winding tunes. For him it was as simple as opening the tap. I wish I could do that, without all those musical knowledge I acquired from my education that only served to raise the level of procrastination and anxiety of doing (artistic) things. Beethoven could write a whole symphony by playing around with a motif as silly as 3 short notes and 1 long note, but try to give him a very long & memorable tune like Ismail Marzuki's, see if he could elaborate it for a symphony without any problems. Remember, young composers: the simpler and shorter the motif, the easier and bigger possibilities it has to elaborate. __________________________________________________________________ Where am I? Oh yes, superbusy September. After that performance I went back home directly to Spain the day after, since I had to write the music for the film "Hari Ini Pasti Menang" ("Today we shall win") by the director Andibachtiar Yusuf. Mostly the music is for orchestra, and I received help from my friends at Institut Musik Indonesia to do it with the computer program Reason 5. It sounds 90% like a real orchestra, and to make it even more real, I am using a few real, human musicians too to mix it with the sounds produced by the software. Writing for orchestra of course takes at least 5-10 times the time to write than for, say, piano solo, so around 20 minutes of orchestral music of this film was done during last month. The rest are for some solo and chamber music, and I am also playing some piano parts (and solo) in the soundtrack. Thanks to Nia and Sammy from IMI for helping with all those computer gadgets. At the moment I am sending Sammy my music through computer, and he converts it to sounds and sends it back to me. ______________________________________________________________________ And during the second half of September I also started practising that gigantic, mammoth, overblown piece, Turangalila Symphony of Olivier Messiaen. It is a work for piano, ondes martenot and (very) big orchestra that lasts for 1,5 hours, in 10 movements. The piano part itself is 140 pages. I don't know whether this, or Ferruccio Busoni's Piano Concerto is the longest in the repertory of piano and orchestra. I have performed Turangalila several times, not every year, and I always remember the most important thing to do before going on stage : go to the toilet. You'd be stuck on stage for 1,5 hours. I have also done something even heavier : performing "20 visions on the child Jesus" by the same composer. Yeah, that's 20 movements and it's for ... piano solo !! I've done it several times too, but that was until around 7 or 8 years ago. So, no rests at all, no orchestra playing while you rest your poor fingers during that 1,5 hours. Messiaen was a kind of 20th century Bach, who wrote everything "dedicated to the glory of God" and that we, the poor musicians playing his music should do anything to reach that superhuman level of virtuosity to be nearer to God, I guess. Anyway, I still have less than 2 weeks, since the concert is scheduled for the 15th of October in the beautiful Royal Opera House just in the garden of the Royal Palace (imagine having an opera house with a capacity of 2000+ in your garden!), and repeated on the 17th at the National Auditorium . ______________________________________________________________________ OK then, enough blogging and back to practice ...

Being better ... than yourself

Time and again, I must confess: I don't like music competitions. It is cruel, and in my opinion something which can be so subjective should not be competed and judged. Yeah you can run faster, you can jump higher, but what is to play the piano better? Or sing better? What is better anyway? ______________________________________________________________________ But now, you tell me something. If you (like me, ca. 25 years ago) were an unknown young (classical) musician, and your parents (or your partner) are neither millionaires nor having friends in high places, what should you do for starting your career? You would need a platform to show people your artistic abilities, right? Now, how would you do that? And another thing. Supposed that you really are confident, and really want to depend solely on your artistic abilities. How would you get audience to come to your concert, as a totally unknown musician? ____________________________________________________________________ That's why when some sponsors proposed me to do the Ananda Sukarlan Award (ASA) back 5 years ago, I accepted it with pleasure. And am equally thankful to Amadeus Performing Arts who, in 2010 followed with another proposal of a competition for voice, "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" in their city, Surabaya, though as ASA it is of national scale. Those competitions will mean so much for the young talents of Indonesia, who are looking for their first steps of their musical career through the "normal", honest way. ___________________________________________________________________ Now, would the winners of the competition guarantee high artistic qualities? Most probably they do. But during the years, we have discovered that artistic quality alone is not enough to build a career. There is a more important aspect in building a musical career, and that is attitude. Yes, (opera) singers are famous for their strange behaviours and demands, but that era is gone now. We need professionals, an artist we can depend on, during the rehearsals, recordings and most importantly in concerts. We all understand how difficult it is to be a singer, carrying your own musical instrument in your body ; in fact, your body IS your musical instrument. It takes high responsibility, and therefore an intense feeling of insecurity all the time. But believe me, it's not only singers who have difficult attitudes. It's just in each and every performers psyche. Yes, including pianists. _______________________________________________________________________ I tell you one thing. Professional artists and performers are simply just workers, nothing else. Yup, workers. Like those who works cleaning the streets. We (in our case, our managers) sign the contracts, we do the job, and that's it. And during the process of doing our job, we are just working like nerds, yeah yeah, it's that boring and that uncool. We don't care if our clothes are cheap or expensive, we don't care about the food whether it's fine dining or junk food. In our head there is just one thing: finish the job, and finish it well. The amateurs are the opposite, they care of those things we don't care: how they look, how they are treated, what kind of priorities they are given and what people think of them. Yeah, they spend so much time, money and energy (that they don't have) to do things (that they can't) to impress people (that they don't like). In fact, they do music not to express, but to impress. Sadly, in the end, nobody's impressed. _______________________________________________________________________ I wrote this inspired by the tweets of my friend, the conductor who recently I worked with, Addie MS. Many people look up to him as someone who is cool and effortless. He tweeted on the day of our concert: "people just see the result in 2 hours, but people don't see (and don't care to see) the days and hours before it, preparing concert, the sweat, the tension. And after all those, I gotta be on stage and smile as if nothing happens". And in fact, he doesn't have to smile, he's a conductor, he doesn't face the public! But that's the extra mile, that mile with an s. _______________________________________________________________________ I always remember my dad's advice: "Son, you don't have to be better than other people. You just gotta be better than what you think you could be". Still working on it, dad.

My third book of works for voice

On preparing the 3rd volume of collections of my vocal works, I realize that for the last two years (after the 2nd volume was published) I haven't written that many songs. However, I did write a lot for the voice : I wrote my two chamber operas (Laki-Laki Sejati & Mendadak Kaya) both in 2011, and I am writing a new one at the moment, again based on a short story of Putu Wijaya. So, the 3rd volume of "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" (Ananda Sukarlan's Vocal works) contains in fact mostly works I've written before 2010. I copied them down in Sibelius file, and of course revised some of them or even finished them. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are still some songs (solo & duet) from the past unpublished that couldn't be included in this book. I think if I publish them, they would easily make another book, and that's it. Those will be the complete songs of my life. And since I was so aroused to write dramatic works, my interest in writing short songs diminished. Since vocal works involve words and texts, I realized that I wasn't just interested in that highly expressive and unique "musical instrument" (which is the human voice) but also the character and drama that comes together with it. So, although I am quite sure of a 4th volume of my song collections, I am not so sure if there will be a 5th one, since I quite lose interest lately in doing them. Except if suddenly someone like Fischer-Dieskau or Peter Pears come to my life and totally inspires me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The poets whose poems I set to music the most in my third book are Ready Susanto (from Bandung), Hasan Aspahani (now living in Batam) and Nanang Suryadi (from East Java; I am not sure where he's from, what I know is that he's a lecturer in the Brawijaya University in Malang at the moment). There are also 2 songs based on tweets, by the Peruvian poet Jose Luis Mejia and the Indonesian M. Aan Mansyur. And then there are 2 songs for voice & guitar. There are also other foreign poets here: Longfellow, Robert Browning and of course O Captain, my Captain Walt Whitman. Both the Whitman & Browning poems are unabashedly erotic, although there are other poems by Indonesians that are quite erotic as well, though not so much as those two foreigners. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Again, I was "forced" to compile my scattered manuscripts of songs, thanks to Patrisna Widuri who will again organize the National Voice Competition next year. The rules are not yet published since she is formulating it with her artistic team, but you can already join the competition's facebook group : http://www.facebook.com/groups/361289260607185/ . They (and I) will publish news & updates regularly there. The vocalists can choose from this 3rd collection of mine for their repertoire in the competition.

Foreword of mine for the ASA Int'l Piano Competition this year

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." -Aristotle (384-322 BC) ............................................................................. Two years have passed since Edith Widayani won the Ananda Sukarlan Award (ASA) 2010, and four years since Inge Buniardi won the 2008 edition. Now, both have excelled and certainly will continue to do so (and both coincidentally are at the moment living in the same country, the USA, as brilliant students receiving full scholarships) taking part in building Indonesia's reputation as one of the biggest "producers" of highly accomplished classical musicians. Both have won tough piano competitions abroad that have brought them to the first shining steps of their pianistic careers. ........................................................................................... We admit that competition is not the best way to build musicianship, but it is, until now, the only way to start a classical music career, where it become a platform where talents are discovered and recognized. Taking part in competitions and how to prepare for it is now a natural part of musical education, and its merit is now even more meaningful, considering that there are so many business of music schools that offers "instant" education, fulfilling the many hopes of parents for their children to be "able" to play the piano in a few months time. The quality of a musician can only be proved by one's musical performance and nothing else, and it is only through a competition where one can present one's quality both to the wide public and to experts who act as judges. It is through the quality of those musicians that the classical music scene of the country would grow and bloom and in the long run it is through them that classical music would be accepted, "understood" and loved. ............................................................................................ The classical music scene is a very active one now in Indonesia, going to both positive and negative directions. As one of the top 5 users of social media (especially Facebook and Twitter) of the world, Indonesian classical music also is well represented with so many Facebook groups and twitter followers. Many sources of informations are by amateurs, and some of them provide misinformations, but time will filter the good quality of those forums which at the moment grow more in quantity than in quality. We hope that ASA could contribute not only once every two years by producing Indonesia's great pianists of tomorrow, but also in the daily life of classical music by being a meeting point for classical musicians in its events, either concerts, workshops and seminars that we have organized and keep on doing. Let's hope the new acquaintances, not only among musicians but also between musicians and music lovers that we made in events such as this competition would then develop for a long time, and if distance is an issue, let's keep in touch virtually through the social media. Happy music making, folks! ....................................................... @anandasukarlan

Ilham will always mean inspiration (RIP, Ilham Malayu)

Obituaries. Those are entries I wish I'd never gotta write. Just a few days ago I blogged about the death of my longtime idol Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who I never knew, and this time not only on another great inspirer of mine, but a great friend too. ----- The writer & poet Ilham Malayu passed away yesterday. He was the first person whose poems convinced me to write music based on my language. I have lived since 1987 abroad, and during those years I haven't had enough contact with Indonesian language, since Yahoo Messenger, Facebook and let alone Twitter haven't been invented yet. So naturally I felt more at home in other languages, English and later Spanish. That's why the vocal works pre-2005 of mine were all based on these languages..... until I met Ilham Malayu. His poem, KAMA, became my first song in Indonesian. You can read all about it in my entry at http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com/2006/12/my-song-your-song-not-elton-johns.html . --------------------------------- Ilham was a great example of a winner. A winner is not someone who never failed: he is, like all of us, one who failed but manages to get up and learn from his mistakes. And he's made the world a much better place too. As you can read in my article about him, he was a drug addict. Now, llham used narcotics, psychotropic and other addictive substances (drugs) for 12 years. Eight years of which he was wearing it every day with a lot of volume. "There have been many kinds of drugs I used. Start of morphine, marijuana, heroin, until metadone," he once said. In 1999, when he was released from prison, Ilham was determined to fight in the path of anti-drug. "I have principles, do not let someone else end up like me. Those who have not been exposed to it, please do not try. Those who have become addicts should stop immediately," he said. He was determined to stop being an addict a few years before he finished his sentence in jail. That was done because he saw pictures of his son (from a previous wife), Kama Kelana, which was sent to prison. In the photo Kama accidentally put a frown. "The photo was accompanied by the phrase: This is for my father. From there I realized this while I was having fun, my child was suffering," said Ilham who immediately asked the warden to be treated for an escape from drug addiction. After he was released he worked in a rehab center for drug addicts, and he became a councellor for many of young drug addicts. He also became an activist and public speaker against drug abuse. ---------------- He will be missed. He transmitted beauty in our life. Beauty in our lives against drugs, and beauty in poetry. -------------------------- A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness. - John Keats. Requiescat in Pace, Muhammad Ilham Malayu.

A tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Yesterday I lost, we lost, one of the greatest inspirational figure in classical music. The great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died at 86 (he was born in 1925). He wasn't a great operatic figure, since his forte lies in the art of German lieder, but it was exactly that facet which inspired me a lot. His recording with Gerard Moore of Schubert's songcycle Winterreise must have been the best recording of that masterpiece, and he had recorded it with other pianists (including Alfred Brendel) several times. Ah, those good old times when we could make countless recordings and could be appreciated by music lovers. Now it's all the downloading culture in the internet. --------- The baritone voice used to be considered as "the tenor voice who couldn't hit high notes", and then Fischer-Dieskau came to rescue its reputation. I am not going to post his biography, since one can easily find it now by googling him. I just wanna write about his impact on me, mostly when I was still studying in my early 20s. The first recording of his I heard was Gustav Mahler's Lieder eine Fahrende Gesellen, with Leonard Bernstein, taking the three movements usually sung by a mezzo-soprano and making them very much his own. But after several other recordings of his I listened to, two of them made a special impact on me. The first one was Britten's War Requiem, whose baritone part was written inspired by and especially for him. It became one of the landmark pieces of my life, not only musically but also an eye-opener to the real meaning of war, and therefore life. Oh and of course Britten wrote his Songs and Proverbs of William Blake for Fischer-Dieskau, a beautiful songcycle for baritone and piano which I still dream of performing one day. -------------- The other one was Sir Michael Tippett's The Vision of St. Augustine, a work for baritone solo, choir & orchestra. Sir Michael in that work attempts the "reach to exceed humanity's grasp" with the baritone solo, the metaphor for the present that follows Augustine's account of the vision combined with the chorus, the symbol of the past and future with its commentary on Augustine's narrative. Out of these disparate and conflictive forces, transcendence erupts. Tippett shows us that with effort, humanity has the potential to reach transcendence through music, and Fischer-Dieskau realized his aspirations. Sir Michael avoided any reference to the tradition of the Music of the Spheres in the Vision of St. Augustine so as not espouse transcendence as attainable through manipulation of patterns and numerology. Instead he turned to the music of the angels, those messengers of God whose language discloses the music of transcendence, and consequently, the connection to the Divinity. Tippett's principal vocal technique is glossolalia, those vocalizations or excited repetitions of vowels to depict the character of angelic singing. Glossolalia, a term from the Greek, are the wordless sounds and shouts accompanying ecstasy. Glossolalia is most prevalent in the vision of eternity, particularly in extension of the final syllables of "alleluia." Unison singing beginning with the lowest male voices extending through the ranges of the highest female voices creating vast arches, using short note values and antiphonal singing complete the angelic vocalizations, and require virtuoso singing from the chorus. It was this piece hanging in the back of my mind when I wrote my own (much lesser in scale and artistic quality, unfortunately) second cantata LIBERTAS which has the same (again, less quantity of instruments) formation. You can download the whole cantata if you have an iPad, iPod touch or even in your iPhone by just searching my name on appStore. By the way, in that app called "Ananda Sukarlan - Premium" you can also listen to many of my songs for baritone, sung by Joseph Kristanto. Some of those songs owe their existence to Fischer-Dieskau's inspirational voice, I must say. And now heaven is so lucky to have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He is singing now for the angels. Requiescat in Pace, Maestro. You deserve to leave this world by saying that you left it better than when you found it. At least a humble Indonesian boy who dreamt to be a musician & composer could realize it, thanks to you. And you've made him love music more, and made it a big part of his life.

Broken but busy

So, I've been busier than I thought I would during this one-leg period. Things did slow down though, I must say. It takes me almost twice the time for taking showers, moving around (especially going up and down the stairs) etc. And I haven't had time to visit Google Art Project since I last blogged! But I did stay to fulfill the invitation for teaching in Rotterdam Conservatory last week, and I even didn't change the program of my lecture-concert there (though I didn't use the left pedal for my First Etude, which made it more difficult). I met some very enthusiastic students there and would like to greet them from Jakarta where I am now. /------/ I arrived in Jakarta last Friday very late at night, Chendra picked me up at the airport and we both went by his car to Bandung directly. I flew with Emirates and had to transit for 3,5 hours in Dubai. Since there were difficulties with plugging my laptop at the airport, I spent my waiting time scribbling down some sketches for a section of ballet music which I will work with Chendra later this year. Emirates didn't have WiFi on board either so that explained my almost-24-hour absence in cyberspace. /------/ We had some busy time in Bandung, talking with BIMA (Bandung International Music Academy) preparing our international piano competition to be held next July. It will be a very big and important landmark in classical music in Indonesia, and unfortunately the city of Bandung doesn't have an adequate concert hall, so we use the Bandung International School who's been very kind in collaborating by providing their hall whose audience capacity is around 220. That's the best we can get, especially since we can use their other rooms for the jury meeting as well as for participants (we will put several pianos there). It is located very near to the entrance to the city if you arrive from Jakarta, right after the toll gate, and next to the big university Maranatha. We invited a young Belarusian pianist Alesia Arnatovich last weekend to perform there to a fully booked hall, and that concert served as a litmus test for its acoustics. She satisfied the audience well, and received good critics from the local newspapers too. /------/ Just before I left home in Spain, I had a nice visit and interview frrom the leading Global & Greatness coach, Michael Thallium at my house. He made several videos of it, and a few days ago he finished editing the whole thing. If you want to watch the complete one, you can click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5DcDyPUlY . Sorry for my stupidity after my 4 years blogging career I still cannot post a link properly here. Please just copy & paste it. You can read his introduction too at http://www.michaelthallium.com/en/2012/05/02/ananda-sukarlan-espana-e-indonesia/

My 3rd day in home detention

So this is how it feels, staying completely at home, mostly lying down for 3 days. I even haven't gone out to my garden (these 2 last days were raining anyway). Honestly I feel rather .. ehm .. gloomy for not being able to do many things I want due to my broken left foot, but looking back to these 3 days I do feel that I have done many things which, in normal circumstances, I would be too indifferent to do.

I revised my emails & facebook messages of the last few months, answered many of them (I admit I am not a good responder of emails, sorry for many of the unanswered ones in the past!), and thrown away lots of rubbish in my inbox as well as archives in my laptop. Anyway, thank you SO much for those many nice messages of best wishes from you all, friends. It means a lot to me that you are there for me not only in health but also in sickness. I also listened to lots of music yet unknown to me; I found great music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Gustav Holst (both have been my favorites anyway) and even discovering the music of Victor Ullmann who died young in the Nazi concentration camp. But the one thing I am most grateful for is the Google Art Project; thanks to this accident I have the luxury of hours & hours of visiting so many galleries in my bed without having any guilty feeling! Isn't it ironic now that I can't walk, I can explore more museums than ever? There are just so much great music created on this planet that I haven't got to know, even only through listening once, and so many paintings I haven't seen even only through their photos on Google Art Project.

Nevertheless, the most important thing is that I looked through many of my old musical works, most of them small pieces, and finished and revised some of them. And this morning I talked with Chendra my manager to publish the 3rd volume of my vocal works. Without this accident, this wouldn't happen soon, since many (at least 7) of those songs were abandoned & unfinished. I also find some short chamber works, such as a string trio, a trio for flute, viola & harp which I originally wanted to write for a friend who had a trio and performed Debussy's Trio and others with this formation. I was stuck that time and decided to abandon it.
This was also triggered by the intention of Patrisna Widuri, the initiator and founder of the National Voice Competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" who wants to organize the competition's second edition next year. After compiling all my vocal works, I found 33 of them ready to be published. These include 4 songs on poems of Hasan Aspahani, 7 on Nanang Suryadi, 2 more of Sitor Situmorang and individual songs on those of Sapardi Djoko Damono, Sitok Srengenge, Abang Edwin, Sirikit Syah and the English ones by Browning, Whitman, Longfellow and even a Spanish one: retweeting @jlmejia , on short poems (and tweets) by Peruvian poet Jose Luis Mejia, etc. No duets will be in this book, and it will also highlight my preference to lower voices: baritone, bass and alto.

I have sent the file of those 33 songs to Chendra, and since he is a very fast-worker, I am sure that he will process its publishing soon, so I guess "Ananda Sukarlan's Vocal Works, Volume 3" will be released sometime in about 1 month time.