All That Jazz

Most of you might have noticed that when I am asked the emblematic question "who's your favorite pianist" I always had difficulties in answering it. Naturally, the unmentioned word in that question is "classical" that comes before the word "pianist". Well, it's because I don't really have one, to tell you the truth. My idols are mostly jazz pianists, and even those who have passed away. I am a big fan of Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Chick Corea and Friedrich Gulda. The classical pianist whom I admire until now are even the not-so-common (or "classical") ones, such as Gulda as I mentioned, Glenn Gould, Andre Previn and Leonard Bernstein. I just can't mention the usual stereotypes of academic, "refined" classical pianists as my idol ... and of course it's my problem. There are of course incredibly brilliant ones, but I just don't listen to them anymore. Yeah I did when I was younger, but not now. ............................................................................................................................................. In Indonesia, classical pianists are a kind of new race that started to inhabit our country very recently. When I was small, of course there were classical pianists, but none that could impress me, or therefore any other people. Of course there was Yazeed Djamin (1951-2001) who studied in the US, who inspired me in many ways. He was by far the most charismatic, and most brilliant. The others who studied abroad were more dedicated to teaching, like our pioneer Mrs. Latifah Kodijat (born in 1928, she was perhaps the first piano teacher in Indonesia, if I may say so), Pujiwati Effendi, Trisutji Kamal (who composed much more than teaching, luckily, to be able to contribute to the repertoire of Indonesian classical music of that period that was really scarce) and my teachers Soetarno Soetikno, Rudy Laban and then the younger generations. ............................................................................................................................................. Therefore, the ones who really performed regularly during my childhood and teenage period were the jazz pianists. And among them, I put two of them on a high pedestal : Nick Mamahit and the younger Hendra Wijaya, this latter is more famous in his virtuosic ragtimes. I cherish those hours before I slept as a teenager listening to Hendra Wijaya playing Tiger Rag, Tico Tico etc with the Ireng Maulana All Stars. And Nick Mamahit was important for me coz it was from him that I listened to the Indonesian folk music, improvised in his characteristic jazz style. Who would imagine that ages later I would do the same with my Rapsodia Nusantara, and in classical style? In fact, this last Rapsodia Nusantara I finished writing a few days ago is just so jazzy from beginning to end, meaning that it is full of blue chords and funky syncopes

. ............................................................................................................................................. Of course I would definitely say that to start learning the piano, the classical techniques are always the best for everyone. We learn how to play scales, arpeggios, chords etc. properly from the music of Mozart, Chopin, Liszt and Prokofiev etc. They laid the foundations of piano playing, not only in classical style but also in jazz. But then we should remember that all those composers were IMPROVISERS too, and it was only at the second half of the 20th century existed a clear difference between a pianist (or interpreter of instruments of any kind) and composers. The only genre of music where musicians create something fresh on stage since then was in jazz. And yeah, there were jazz players who reeeeeally developed the classical techniques. I remember how Hendra Wijaya played Tico Tico, and I dare to say that he wouldn't be able to do it if he didn't practice his Mozart Sonatas in his younger years. But then he brought that Mozartian technique to an incredible speed! ............................................................................................................................................. When the International Java Jazz organizers invited me to perform in their festival next March, I immediately accepted it. I wanna show the public, that without Nick Mamahit, Hendra Wijaya and many of international jazz pianists whom I highly admire I wouldn't be able to write many of my music. My concert at Java Jazz would then be a tribute to my heroes. They inspired me when I was young, they still stay in my memories now. ............................................................................................................................................. If you wanna come to my concert at Java Jazz, I'll be playing on their last day, Sunday March 8th at 3.30 p.m. You still can enjoy the beautiful sunset afterwards, and have a nice dinner with your partner. You got no partner? Well, you might find one in my concert! C u all there, folks!

Creative Arts, Creative Industry, Creative Economy

Well, well, the year started with a bang. I am both surprised and grateful that the prominent news magazine in Indonesia, TEMPO, presented me with a double honor. They have chosen my opera CLARA as the best live performance of the year, and also have chosen me as their one of their Artist Of The Year, in the category of Performing Arts. It is a tradition they have done every year, with a board of jury consisting prominent journalists and artists of different fields, so I am deeply grateful that my colleagues have chosen me for this year. They based that decision mainly on CLARA, which in fact I still think is far from being perfect. No matter what people think about CLARA, positive or negative, I am aware that it has its musical flaws (and Chendra our director & choreographer might think equally in his field, and everyone else too in their own ones). If it were to be performed again, I am going to do something about it, since after the premiere I managed to think "out of the box" and see the problem from another point of view. I am no Mozart, I couldn't grasp a 70ish-minute length opera in just a few seconds. After I heard, and SAW it, then I could hopefully fix it. Maybe not many in the audience were aware of this flaw, but me as the composer, I would like to revise and repair some things to make it better. Anyway, I am he who always look at today as an opportunity to do better what I have done yesterday. And a work of art is like life, it is never finished until the day you die. And even "finish" is not the right word, "cut off" is perhaps more appropriate. .............................................................................................................................................. Aside from its artistic issues, CLARA is a proof of how we could succeed in the first steps of classical music industry here in Indonesia. Indonesia has succeeded in its creative economy in the field of theatre and fine arts, it's starting in the film industry and of course already a long time in pop music. CLARA is of course "commissioned" music, but the commissioner, which is the non-governmental organization Indonesia for Humanity, expected (perhaps "gambled" is a better word) an income from it, apart from employing it as a vehicle to spread its mission in raising awareness in the society for their mission. So, their function is more of a producer. Of course making a simple piano recital is much cheaper budget-wise, but I am talking about a collaborative performing arts, where several artists work together involving many performers and artists of different fields. This is not a subsidized work of art, either governmental (which as we can see in Europe, almost always ends up in corruption or nepotism) or from a private company. This is purely a(n artistic) product which is expected to give and take, that we do justice to the public, that they would receive what they have paid for. It is not serving that longtime b*llshit "Art for Art's sake". Art should be part of the society, and I always believe that it is a necessity, unlike what our previous generation said "first you need to eat, then you can have art. Art cannot prosper when the stomach is empty". No, artists live from art, and public should have art as their other food, even if it is a food for our souls, or as Shakespeare said, "music is the food of love". If the public cannot enjoy, or what is always said "understand" the arts, then something is wrong, either it's the public, or the art product itself. If they say "I don't get it", well, we artists have no rights to ask them to pay what they don't get. I am sure that we would be able to bring the classical music glory back to the golden age of Franz Liszt or Richard Wagner. And that can only be achieved in the Asian countries, where we have no tradition of classical music, so we are not tied and bound by how it should be presented. Just mentioning one example : we should remember that the tradition of "you should be totally silent during a classical music concert" only started with Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner at the end of the 19th century where audience should not clap between the numbers of Kindertotenlieder so that they wouldn't break the intense silences between. In tropical countries, with at least a couple of insects flying around if it's an open air concert, how could we be that silent? In any case, the audience should be comfortable without disturbing the others, just like we watch a film in the cinema. Now we have tough competitors : internet with its iTunes, youtubes etc., where people can just listen and even WATCH the music at home. So, I am quite realistic that this won't be like the 1970s-90s, when recording sells millions, and performers' and composers' bank account kept dripping money while they were watching TV or sitting on their toilet. No, no, it won't be as easy as that. But we gotta work hard, and harder. .............................................................................................................................................. I am so happy and grateful with all artists involved in CLARA. Even in a free market now, I do believe in the potentials of Indonesian musicians and artists. As Walt Whitman says "To have great poets, there must be great audiences", so we should be a great audience for our own artists. Yeah, we still lack good musicians in a few instruments, especially in the orchestra, but in a competitive world and open ASEAN economic community starting 2015 this will soon change. The performance of the Indonesian (classical) musicians will improve quickly, since it's gonna be a tough, tough competition from now on, just like what all of us, Indonesians living abroad are facing. And we gotta believe in Indonesian musicians, employ them for the concerts inside the country, and keep the country's money inside the country. .............................................................................................................................................. The credits of CLARA in Tempo Magazine only go to the 3 creators : the writer Seno Gumira Ajidarma, the director & choreographer Chendra Panatan and me, but I should say that I am so equally and deeply grateful to the performers that has made it alive with their strong characters. Primarily I thank the 3 wonderful singers : Isyana Sarasvati, Widhawan Aryo Pradhita, Ivan Subuhwanto who took those difficult roles and could realize them with their own complex personalities. Next come the dancers Aprida Darmawansyah, Mariska Febriani and the "rapists" Mislam, Hendri Desmal and Lukas. A huge contribution from Jakarta Drum School is so greatly appreciated, they managed to do the aural and visual climax of the opera, since they went the extra mile and were willing to do what they normally don't do: be actors and choreographed on stage. And then Elwin Hendrijanto who has meticulously took those black dots on the music paper and put them all in the right places in his sampler to make exactly the sounds I wanted. Hey, thanks to my high school friend Prasodjo Winarko who lent his Mercedes Benz of 1996 from one of his collections of cars too! Perhaps next time you would allow us to destroy and explode it too on stage, eh pal? ;) . And then, I also like to express my gratitude to Willy Haryadi, my hypnotherapist who has avoided me from going crazy during my "dry" period. And I do learn a lot from him too. .............................................................................................................................................. Last but not least, I am thankful to all those musicians in the past and present who have inspired me. You might have heard influences from Shostakovich, Britten, Philip Glass, Pet Shop Boys or Queen in CLARA. And of course The Beach Boys! Yeah, without them, I wouldn't be the composer I am now. God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You!

RIP Sitor Situmorang, and my deepest apologies

If I have to regret one thing this year, perhaps it is the death of the great poet Sitor Situmorang, and what I have (not) done. You see, I set to music several poems of his, and in my newest CD "An Essay on Love" I recorded two of them : Malam Kebumen (Kebumen Night) and Surat Kertas Hijau (Green Paper Letters, which is one of his most well known poems). Sitor has been living in Holland for many years now. I told him last month (November), through his wife, that we were going to release the CD in mid December, and of course they were very keen in receiving the CD. Sitor himself had listened to some of my music based on his poems, either live or through the only existing online recording of it, sung by Samuel Tandei : http://wuol.org/tenor-samuel-tandei/ . In the CD they were sung by Widhawan Aryo Pradhita, who has been famous overnight last week for his great, I mean reaaallly great, interpretation as the policeman in CLARA. In fact, now after watching him live and through youtube, and read the raving reviews on the media on him, people buys the CD and ask "in which songs / tracks does Clara's policeman sing?" .............................................................................................................................................. Now, the CDs themselves have been finished in print a week prior to the world premiere of CLARA. But that was the busiest week for us all, me, Chendra and all staff of The Ananda Sukarlan Center. The rehearsals took so much time, especially with the complex music, choreography and stage settings ... and to add them all up into a whole show! So, we just ignored that pile of CDs in our office and did nothing with them, although people had ordered them from all around Indonesia. Anyway, it was supposed to be officially launched during CLARA, where our former President of the Republic, Mr. BJ Habibie was invited but still was sick and gotta cancel all public appearances, even until today. So, as usual, things could wait, and people could wait for it too .... until yesterday, that we received the news of the death of the great poet, and realized that death could NOT wait. Anyway, I wasn't aware that he has been sick. In fact, I wasn't aware about anything else during the preparation of CLARA and even a few days afterwards. The only people I talked to are those who are involved in CLARA. And so, the CDs which were sent to the poets were sent a few days after the premiere of CLARA .... and one of them arrived too late to be listened to by its poet. .............................................................................................................................................. Apparently Sitor Situmorang wasn't just sick. He refused to go out of his appartment for the last few months, and his weight had dropped to a mere 37 kilograms. I remember, when I met him for the first time like 4 years ago, I had the same sensation as when I met Indonesia's great composer Amir Pasaribu. Both have been rejected by our own country, both had to live in exile by the same regime. There is that look in their eyes, the look of ... suspicion? .. , but mixed with a kind of love and pain. Perhaps that's the effect of hypersensitive people being inflicted by violence and suffering. Sitor spent 8 dark years in prison without trial right after the rise of Suharto, and certainly the scars of that period remain open until now. Suharto and the New Order era erased the names of a number of intellectuals and writers, including Sitor, from textbooks because they were considered left-wing. However, Sitor kept the line clear between the regime and the country he loves. Sitor was always faithful and sincere in defending his country and nation. He was 91 when he died. It is now OUR task to put him in his prominent place in Indonesian history, as one of our greatest poets who has inspired many people, me included. Requiescat in Pace, Requiem Aeternam, Sitor Situmorang.

Fun (and not so fun) Facts on CLARA

Thank God the premiere of CLARA went very well. All my artistic worries proved to be unnecessary, since I got great support from Chendra Panatan who had done an impressive concept of choreography, stage decor and even lighting (to those who don't know, he also studied stage lighting with one of the best experts in the world, Jennifer Tipton from New York). His spectacular visual art could dissimulate all the shortcomings in my music! Anyway, as any live performances, there are things that have gone wrong, but hey, that's the beauty of live performances, eh? Since then, many reporters, music students, or just curious friends asked me about things in CLARA, so I guess I just share all those here. Let's consider this "Everything you wanna know about Clara and are afraid to ask", hehehe .... .............................................................................................................................................. G minor is the predominant tonality throughout the whole opera. Not only it is easy to be played on string instruments, but it is also the minor paralel of B-flat, which I usually employ to express love (such as in my song Dalam Doaku). Since hatred is the theme of this opera, I employed this tonality coz as we say, love and hate are just two sides of a coin. .............................................................................................................................................. Clara's original car in Seno Gumira's story is a BMW. But we couldn't find a BMW from the year around 1998, so we got a Mercedes instead. Luckily, the word Mer-Ce-Des has the same amount of syllables as B-M-W , and they even share the pronounciation similarities in Indonesia. So, that's how we changed it into a Mercedes. We borrowed it from a friend of mine at highschool, Prasodjo, who is also the founder of Jakarta Drum School, whose drummers participated (and became one of the highlight of the opera!) in CLARA. .............................................................................................................................................. In all my music the materials, which might be motifs, or "inspiration" if you wanna say it in a cool term, can come from anywhere, anything or anybody. There is one motif, sung by the Policeman in my opera CLARA, which is made from the figure of a penis. It consists of figure A and B: A is 2 adjacent notes (mostly with an interval of a major second) and then B is another 2 notes with a pretty "sizeable" interval. The first two of course reflects the 2 balls, and the real penis is the last two notes. This is employed when the police is feeling horny. The B part can vary their interval, especially if it depicts the growing erection of the penis. The last, largest and most obvious use of this motif is in the policeman's last aria, where he sings "Ayolah sana, tidur" (Come on, sleep). .............................................................................................................................................. I was very much pressed in time in writing CLARA, but during its actual composition I managed to write Two lullabies for piano. The last one was written on the 19th of November, the birthday of my daughter Alicia, since I just got the news (in this internet era is there still a belated news? Yeah, yeah if you are immersed in writing an opera!) about the birth of Daphne Gabriella Irawan, daughter of my good friend Catherine Tanujaya (founder of The Piano Institute in Surabaya) and her husband "Hungry" Jeff (he owns a restaurant hehehe). But in fact, her daughter was born exactly on the same day of Darleen Kristianto, daughter of my highly admired pianist friend Henoch Kristianto, and since I knew about his daughter the same day (even hour!) of her birth, I wrote her lullaby on her birth, 31st of October. In fact, since she was born in the morning, I sent the lullaby in the evening, so it's so valid being a welcoming present to Darleen, eh? And those lullabies gave me a flash of happiness, having finished being written in just 1 or 2 hours, while CLARA was written in months! And it's good to write 2 lullabies at a space of 19 days, if I had written it on the same day they would both sound almost the same! .............................................................................................................................................. You know that popular website www.moviemistakes.com . Well, I am giving away our own bloopers here. There were two HUGE accidents during the second show of Clara. One, you might wonder what the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" were doing during the 2 minutes before Clara was raped, right? Well, Clara's and her dad's microphone didn't work during that song at the second show. She should have sung a counter-melody on top of Beach Boys' melody. So, "God Only Knows" just passed by for 2 minutes without anything happening.Yeah, it wasn't easy to write those polyphonic stuff on top of their gorgeous song, and thanks to the bloody sound technician, it turne to be an epic fail! Luckily someone videotaped a clip from the first show, you can sort of grab my idea here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQMtuiqMVYc .............................................................................................................................................. - Another accident was the old (wo)man who fell off the steps of the police station. It was an accident! It wasn't in the scenario! But Mislam, the actor who fell, improvised that fall brilliantly that it added a touch of humor in this otherwise dark and gloomy show of 1 hour 10 minutes. By the way, this old woman also symbolizes someone who is "different" in our society, just like the Chinese descendants. It was made unclear whether it was a he or she, but we want to accentuate his/her kind heart. Just like the Chinese, everyone who are born different may be born to be hated, although they have a heart just like the rest of us. Sometimes better, even. .............................................................................................................................................. Originally the production was for 1 night only, which is on the 14th of December. But 1 month before the premiere, tickets were selling very well, and so the organizers decided to open another show. Since the 15th happened to be a Monday, not a good day for shows in Jakarta as the city with the most congested traffic in the world, they decided for the 13th. I was against that idea, since I am very superstitious (read my entry http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-truth-about-number-121.html ). But look, apparently the accidents happened on the 14th! .............................................................................................................................................. The role of Clara's Father was originally for Nikodemus Lukas, a 19-year-young (perhaps too young to be a daddy) tenor who has sung many of my music and even recorded them for the CD "An Essay on Love", but for personal problems he resigned just a bit less than 3 weeks before the premiere. In the middle of a panic situation, we got Ivan Subuhwanto, a more mature tenor. Fortunately he is also familiar with some of my music, so he knew what he was facing! The poor guy had to learn all my crazy tunes in that short time. He was of course in a panic attack, but he managed to do his job very well, and I am sure that if we perform CLARA again he would excel brilliantly. .............................................................................................................................................. Last but not least, is that the ending of CLARA was concieved 4 days before its premiere! Chendra realized that visually it wasn't stunning enough to have the duet between Clara and her father to end it. So he devised the "Blood Tears" scene that lasts for 2'30" . And of course he asked me without hesitation "Could you please write 2'30" of music tonight so we can rehearse it tomorrow". So after arriving at my appartment at midnight, I had to write music with motifs taken from the post-raping music as the ending, finished at 3.30 a.m just to wake up a few hours later at 8 a.m to rehearse with the singers. If you think this is extreme, then you don't know that Mozart wrote the Overture for his Don Giovanni THE MORNING of the world premiere!

An Essay on Love (and the lack of it)

LOVE is the underlying theme for most of the works in my new CD, En Essay On Love. It is always my favorite theme, since it is the most powerful force in the entire universe. Without this preconceived idea of love, we would be acting like a blind person searching for the light with thousand of obstacles in front of us, although love, or to be precise the unrequited or the lack of it, is often the source of the most intense pain and sufferings in this world. But it is also the most mysterious existing word in our vocabulary. What is Love? I believe, all my music involving this theme is my own search of its meaning, since it could only be "explained" in music since it is too deep to be expressed in words. Like music, we don't understand it, and perhaps we don't need to. We just feel it. And like music, it is merely a product of a chemical reaction inside our brains. As simple as that, but the outcome could become the most complex thing that we humans could deal with. .............................................................................................................................................. The "main course" of this CD is my 3-movement Chamber Symphony no.1 "In Memoriam Ainun Habibie" which is a complex mixture between the brainy scientific issues and the intuitive passion of love. But there are other shorter works to complete this CD. .............................................................................................................................................. I wrote a series of works for wind instruments inspired by "Metamorphosis" by Ovid. Echo's Whisper for oboe & piano is the complementary piece for my work for flute & piano, Narcissus Dying. Ovid's masterpiece, together with Shakespeare's complete plays and Plato's Symposium (also a philosophical research about love) are the three books whose excerpts I always read, no matter how little, every night before I go to sleep. Echo and Narcissus is a tale about the nymph Echo and her human lover Narcissus. In short, the god Juno took away Echo's ability to engage in conversation as punishment for her misdeeds. Echo could only respond to questioning. One day Echo was at a pond which she frequented, when a human man came into view. This is Narcissus, and he instantly falls in love with Echo. But, since Echo can only respond to Narcissus, he begins to get aggravated. She cannot explain to her new lover why she must be so cryptic. Echo could only respond with the last words of whomever she was speaking or listening to. Narcissus then looked into the pond, and upon seeing himself, immediately fell in love. He was unable to control himself or his new "lover", for it was simply a reflection of himself. This was caused by the god Rhamnusia, for Narcissus had scorned the nymphs that had mocked him. Narcissus then began to weep into the pool, and his tears began to hide the reflection he so loved. He said "Goodbye!", and Echo responded to him "Goodbye!". Narcissus then lay down on the ground, and wept. When his friends went to retrieve his body, they found only a flower of white and purple. .............................................................................................................................................. Indonesia has great poets in abundance. In this CD there are 14 songs based on my favorite poems of my favorite poets: Hasan Aspahani, Sapardi Djoko Damono, Sitor Situmorang, Ready Susanto and Nanang Suryadi. Not only the poems inspired me, but also some singers each with their particular voices do too. Nikodemus Lukas Hariono "Nicky", Theodora Amabel Beatrice "Bea" and Widhawan Aryo Pradhita "Dito" are winners from various categories of the National Voice Competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" 2013, and they won not only for their brilliant technique and virtuosity, but also because they have something to offer in their interpretation of the works they sing, from opera arias to "art-songs", from the baroque or classical up to the music of today. And coincidentally, they were all born and live in the same city, Surabaya. In fact, that city is also present visually in this CD, since the marvellous cover and booklet design and its layout are done by the young and highly talented Ryan Tandya, born in that city too. And the competition mentioned above was initiated and organized by Amadeus Performing Arts of that city. .............................................................................................................................................. Some songs were written purely because the poems itself ignite the music coming from the spaces between the words, some were written inspired by the voice of a particular singer (such as Whitman's O You, Whom I Often and Silently Come, by Nicky's voice), and some triggered a memory or a situation, such as Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu which was about the great Aceh Tsunami, or Dalam Sakit which triggered my memories of one of my best friends who died of AIDS. Therefore, when the AIDS Foundation asked me for a song, I immediately remembered this poignant poem by Sapardi Djoko Damono. These songs examine all aspects of love, such as the suffering of the unrequited love, either a heterosexual one in Nanang Suryadi's Seorang Yang Menyimpan Kisahnya Sendiri or a homosexual one in Whitman's "O You", a farewell either in distance in Pria yang (Pergi) Jauh or in death like Dalam Sakit both on poems by Sapardi Djoko Damono, or a highly erotic one in Sitor Situmorang's Surat Kertas Hijau. Of course I also touch on the aspect of happiness that love brings, such as in Salju di Musim Semi (Chendra Panatan) or Jemari Menari (Nanang Suryadi). .............................................................................................................................................. The CD "An Essay on Love" will be launched during the premiere of my newest opera, CLARA, on December 14th, 2014 at Graha Bhakti Budaya, TIM, Jakarta

God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You

Do you believe in coincidence or destiny? That question aroused when I was writing that section in my opera CLARA, exactly when Clara is driving her BMW before she was attacked by the rapists. It was designed to be 3'30" maximum to create the equilibrium with the sections coming before and after. What I knew was that the music should be calm, but tense. You know, like a thriller or horror movie, when things look all right, but something really bad's gonna happen. Since until then I had no slightest idea of what the music should be like (in terms of notes and harmonies), I left it until the last moment. And so, I have finished all the arias, recitatives, everything, and was left with this 3'30" section. And still it was .... blank. Could something be worse than this situation for a composer ... and time is running out? Apparently it could be. .............................................................................................................................................. It was 3 a.m. (Central European Time) and I had my chat with my new friend Ryan Tandya in Jakarta, an excellent photographer whose works I admire a lot. But we mostly talk about other stuff .... like music, as apparently we have some musical tastes in common. I just finished orchestrating the existing materials of the opera for the day but still stuck on that mentioned scene. And Ryan showed me that BBC Music has released a remake of Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", which I haven't heard for ... oh I dunno ... 30 years maybe or more. It used to be my favorite song, my mom had a vinyl of it, and I remember I loved it since it's so weird, and full of polyphony, which is unusual for a pop song (yeah yeah, I love polyphony since the day I remembered! And not only Bach, but also Brian Wilson - The Beach Boys). Apart from the polyphonic element, the song has a sophisticated harmonic complexity. It modulates in a unique way from A major, D major and E major and extensively uses inverted chords. The tonic chord (E major) usually only appears with the major 3rd or the 5th in the bass. The entire verse progression sounds restless and ambiguous, until the line "God only knows what I'd be without you" when the chord progression finally reaches a clear goal (A—E/G#—F#m7—E). It is as if the idea of 'key' has itself been challenged and subverted. Shortly speaking, a work of genius by Brian Wilson. .............................................................................................................................................. I slept afterwards with that song banging in my head like 50 times repeated during our chat (it was at least a 2-hour one), and naturally I woke up the next morn .. I mean noon with that song in my head. And the song was there to stay, for the rest of the day. If you are a fellow composer, then you know this problem too well : an existing piece of music sounding in your head blocks your own music from coming out. But hey, I gotta do something. If something's hanging in your head, you can't take it away by thinking that it should go away, in fact it would cling stronger if you do it that way. It just gotta go away naturally ... but how long? And .. if life gives you lemons ... make lemonade, right? So, since the song itself is full of polyphony, why not put more voices to the song? And then I also realized the fact that I (and perhaps even the writer of the story, Seno Gumira Ajidarma) have forgotten this: in a critical situation such a mass riot, when you are driving a car, what do you do? You listen to the radio to hear the news, right? And radios don't just put news, but also music. And what texts could be more appropriate after Clara's father anxiously called his daughter to stay away from the city? If you should ever leave me / Though life would still go on believe me / The world could show nothing to me / So what good would living do me .............................................................................................................................................. Isn't that what we call the conspiracy of the universe? So I decided to put the old recording of that song, and make the singers (Clara and her father) sing polyphonically. Which is in fact, composing new melodies with Brian Wilson's tune as the cantus firmus (that's the cool -- or nerdy -- term for a melody used as the basis for a polyphonic composition). And guess the duration of the song .... yup, it's 3 minutes. With some modification using loops and cut & pastings, it's the perfect duration. And it gives time for the orchestral musicians to rest while the singers are singing with the recording. Nothing could fit perfectly. Well, well, Ryan. I wanted to kill you that day for showing me that bloody videoclip. But now, it feels like .... God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You, Ryan. Thanks!

Composers' block, 2nd part (an introspection)

If you have so much pain in your heart and soul and you want to heal it, you normally go to a psychologist, psychiatrist or even hypnotherapist. Well now I can tell you another way to vomit it out. Write an opera about the traumatic effect of being raped, AND do it very near the deadline. In that case, you don't have a reason to postpone it until tomorrow or the next day. You just gotta deal with it and vomit it on paper (or in our case nowadays, on those bloody Sibelius staves on the computer). This is what I have done for the last 3 weeks. 22 days, writing my ca. 40-minute CLARA, complete with its orchestration. If you do your maths, that means 2 minutes of music every day, and they are not 2 minutes of simple flute solo music of just 1 line. It's a whole orchestration, PLUS the vocal line, PLUS thinking to match the words to the music PLUS doing the polyphony for the dialogues. Until September I only did 2 arias for Clara's father, and they were not even complete, and neither were they orchestrated. They were even written "under pressure", since there was a concert for a "teaser" for CLARA organized by the Four Seasons Hotel and the National Commission for Violence to Women at the end of September. The whole opera is about 2 things: 1. extreme sufferings and pain, both physical and mental ones, and 2. about evil on earth, the decadence of humanity, how extreme we can inflict pain and sufferings to our own brothers and sisters. .............................................................................................................................................. How could I manage to compose so much in so little time? I dunno. I worked like I've never did before, that's for sure. I slept a maximum of 5 hours a day for the last 3 weeks. And of course I don't write this just to finish it in time, otherwise it makes no point of writing this. "To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.", said Leonard Bernstein, the great composer, pianist, conductor and my idol. This is the strangest period of my life, I think. Just before this opera, I wrote my Chamber Symphony, "In memoriam Ainun Habibie" and I was in such a happy and loving mood. Love is always my favorite theme, and the look on Mr. Habibie's (Indonesia's 3rd president and the commissioner of the piece) eyes every time he talked about his late wife was enough to inspire anyone. It was also rapidly composed (Í spent the whole June doing it), but it was much easier. Then, a period of about 2 months of almost nothing put down on paper. I was conscious that CLARA should be finished during that uninspired period of crisis, but somehow I couldn't put any note on paper. I knew and always know HOW to compose, but I just couldn't do it. You might think I am a loser, a whiner, a wimp, well perhaps I am. But there is something in composing which is inexplicable. If I CAN do it, why don't I? I dunno the answer, except that what I gotta write is too painful and too true. A composer's block is not about that we cannot compose, but about something else. Feeling stuck sucks, especially for us creative types. Which logically explains why when we are stuck we resist it. We often start to get "tight". Closed off. Frustrated. We suffer. .............................................................................................................................................. Why is that? .............................................................................................................................................. We suffer because we cannot accept this period of non-performance. Our idea of what our lives should look like takes over what our life does look like. We are not looking at reality clearly and not aligned with the whole truth. It makes the entire "not doing" situation even worse because not only are you now uninspired but you are resentful at life for being uninspired. That's a heck of a lot of suckiness! And yes, I did go to a friend who now specializes in hypnosis, and those sessions really helped. It's like finding a key to a locked door. But perhaps, the thing that helped the most is to be brave enough to touch the pain inside me, and let it go out. Hypnotherapy doesn't do that, but what it does is to make you strong and bold enough to do it. So, perhaps being stuck is not that bad. I now even believe that being stuck is a blessing. It forces us to slow down. To try new things. To question our direction. Being uninspired requires us to stop pushing life and start receiving, if we allow it. Just because life is not unfolding the way you want it to unfold does not mean it's not unfolding the way it's supposed to. .............................................................................................................................................. And what lesson can we learn from CLARA ? That the world, that means WE, don't need money and more money for security. What we need is LOVE. Clara (a fictional character, but based on many real individuals) is depicted as a rich girl whose daddy is a successful businessman. In fact, BECAUSE she is rich (and of Chinese descendant), those wild men who are systematically organized by the stronger power suppose that she deserves to be raped and tortured. Those men, the rapists, are even deeply religious people, and that's where the problem is. They are religious, but they forgot that there is God, and God only means love. .............................................................................................................................................. I can't thank enough my dearest friends for all the late night hang outs, the internet chats. No, they are not the sponsors, but I just wanna say that even with billions of funding from sponsors, without these good friends who helped me in times of darkness, CLARA wouldn't have existed. In this case, friendship means much more than money. So thanks to Erza S.T. the ultimate Grand Duchess of the opera (and drama!), to Risti Brophy and T. Marlene Danusutedjo for all the late night talks accompanying the alcohol, to my close friends with golden voices but also shared their time and support Evelyn Merrelita, Nikodemus Lukas, Mariska Setiawan, to my friend and hypnotherapist Willy Haryadi, and my best friend doubling manager doubling choreographer doubling director of the opera Chendra Panatan. One thing I should warn the public here is that CLARA is not a nice and beautiful opera, but it is a brutally honest one. It's even darker and more painful than all those Puccini death-ending operas, coz this is not about death, but about the exact opposite: the highly questionable purpose of life. I never raped anyone, and I have never been raped either. But I have pain in me, and I put it all in this work. I just hope that there is no more pain inside me left after this, so my next musical works would be all sweet, nice and exquisite (wouldn't it be nice?). .............................................................................................................................................. This blog entry was written late at night (in fact it's almost sunrise) after a visit of my friend, the prominent Global & Greatness Coach Michael Thallium (www.michaelthallium.com ), to my house earlier. Through the years he's made lots of documentaries about me, and in one section of the documentary he shot yesterday I talked about composers' block spontaneously (in all documentaries I didn't use any scripts). After he went home, I started to re-think about it, and so I put here all the thoughts I didn't talk about in the video he made. The link to the video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYXX6Oo_P-U

Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional

There have been quite a few pros and contras about the "teaser" or "preview" on my next opera, CLARA when we performed parts of it last month at the Four Seasons Hotel, Jakarta. Whatever the reaction, it didn't leave people indifferent. The role of Clara's father was sung by the same tenor who will sing it in the premiere next December, Nikodemus Lukas, but the role of CLARA was sung not by Isyana Sarasvati, but by Evelyn Merrelita, who is a bit older than Isyana. Her role at this "teaser" concert wasn't big anyway, and it was done without much acting, and no real costumes and decors, so it was allright. Allright? No, she sang brilliantly, as usual, and so did Niko. We performed 2 arias of Clara's Father : Jangan Pulang (Don't Come Home) and Pesan Papa Terakhir (Dad's last message). The text (by Seno Gumira Ajidarma) is direct, stabbing, and clear. Poetic, but honest and true. In fact, CLARA will be premiered as the closing of the International 16 days against Gender violence, also coinciding with the International Human Rights Day which will also include the Indonesian premiere of that controversial documentary by the Oscar-nominated (for his previous documentary on exactly the theme of violence during the Suharto era) director, Joshua Oppenheimer : The Look of Silence. This film has already been premiered during the Venice Film Festival a few weeks ago. Anyway, about the "contra"s for my opera : some people (especially who went through what happened during the period of the fall of Suharto in May 1998) expressed that my opera will be too painful to them. Not only politically, but also psychologically. Those scars are about to heal, why should we open them up again? .............................................................................................................................................. Do we move on in this life by forgetting the pain of the past? My best friend, the one I always turn to in times of sorrow, always tells me this phrase : Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. That simple? If it's that simple, why is it so hard? .............................................................................................................................................. I am working hard, very hard in finishing this opera. It's been a difficult period, last August and September. I practically composed next to zero during that period. Now time is running out, apart from the fact that my biggest inspirer is always that thing called "deadline", I suddenly have all the things that could inspire and motivate me to compose : the performance of Evelyn Merrelita and Nikodemus Lukas really boosted something inside me (although Evelyn will not sing in my opera in December. I will, certainly, write another opera involving her, after my comic opera "Laki-laki Sejati" where she took the main role 2 years ago), and also the book "Disangkal" ("Denied") which the National Commission On Violence Against Women gave me as a gift. It is a manifestation of "Homo Homini Lupus", a proof of how low humans could act and inflict sufferings to each other. It is a powerful book, and I now know that I am indeed destined to write these operas to understand more about what happened in the past in my beloved country. You see, in May 98 I was still in my appartment in Den Haag. I didn't have internet back then and since it's never a habit for me to watch the news on TV, I realized what happened only a few days later. I then called my mom in Jakarta, who said that I shouldn't worry since that huge mass riot was systematically and massively organized against people of Chinese descendant. Not only we are Javanese, but also my dad was in the military so my family was just very, very safe. And only a year later when I went to Indonesia I found out that things indeed were much worse than I thought. Hundreds of Chinese weren't just killed; they were tortured, and the women were raped in ways unimaginable. There is a history of anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia, but even taking that into consideration, the violence of May 98 was unusually extreme and virulent, attributed to the encouragement of the army and the Suharto regime. .............................................................................................................................................. Friends, we are afraid of ourselves, of our own reality; our feelings most of all. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain. This is not opening old scars, friends. This is about resisting to forget. To heal, we must forgive, but we cannot forget. This entry I wrote is not about being strong, it's about overcoming our weakness. Whether you were held or beaten, cared for or neglected, happy or sad, or TORTURED AND RAPED, take a moment to remind yourself that we are not defined by what has been done or done to us, but by what we choose to do with the time we have left. Fear should be faced head-on and if we're going to fight it, we should do it in a forum that allows the opportunity to help anyone who can relate to it find the courage to move past the past or reach out to get help to escape a painful present. It is painful, yes it is, but we should turn pain into wisdom, and make sure we do not inflict that pain to others in the future. I believe painful emotions have a self-healing and self-correcting component. When we take advantage of it, we flourish. When we don't, we suffer. So, we choose. That simple? If it's that simple, why is it so hard?