New discovery, this time REALLY embarrassing

You remember last January when I "discovered" Sapardi Djoko Damono and his poems, right ? Well, this time, it's a contemporary composer. I heard it for the first time at a dinner at Jeroen Kohnstamm's (a friend of Chendra, and now a friend of mine as well) beautiful house beside the river Vecht. He was cooking a very nice meal based on chicken, salad and some pasta, and we were drinking wine in his living room (Geoffrey King, Chendra Panatan and Iman Ahimsa -- a photographer and ex-fashion designer he is a friend of Jeroen and someone new to me who I was happy to get to know). In the background was the Dutch classical radio (oh yes, I forgot to tell you that I am writing this in Amsterdam) . At one moment sounded an incredibly beautiful, exquisite choir piece (we were talking so we didn't listen to the presenter), and silence dawned on us . Everybody was asking to himself who that damned composer was, and Geoffrey was the one who told us it was John Rutter (although he didn't know exactly what piece it was) .

So, "one of the world's leading pianists of new music" (that's what Sydney Morning Herald wrote about me, as well as some other newspapers) ..... and I didn't know John Rutter until 3 days ago . My God, now THAT is music.

In fact, I should confess that a few weeks ago I received a program of an English flutist who played my piece "You Had me at Hello" and she also played a piece by John Rutter. But since I thought that he was just a fake composer like a few other thousands who are comfortable writing avantgarde music, I didn't bother to check him out. Oh, well, nice to know that there are many good composers I still haven't discovered .... in fact, I am sure that many people have not discovered Geoffrey King. He is a really fantastic composer, and I will talk about his music in a few days when I am not in a rush like now . By the way, Chendra made a blog for him so he can have fun while taking breaks from his composing. Check it out at http://gfjking.blogspot.com

The Sleepers in London

Sometimes the sea reminds me of Debussy's La Mer, but everytime I listen to La Mer, it never reminds me of the sea. I discussed this fact and relationship between music and other arts with Chendra Panatan, "my" choreographer, and we agreed that he would do something with the same lines of Whitman's The Sleepers that had inspired me to write my little piece for violin and piano.

And so we did it today. Chendra knows a very good Indonesian photographer in London, Dian Rosita, who is --like Chendra-- doing her Master's degree under the Chevening scholarship. His idea was to make slides of himself posing, interpreting those Whitman lines, to be projected with my music being played, either live or made into a DVD with the music . Nobody accompanies the other. I never, by the way, showed my music (it was a birthday present for Geoffrey King last January the 16th) to them. The idea would be producing a totally new musical & photographic piece based on Whitman's lines, but it wouldn't really matter if the listener (and watcher) would NOT connect it with Whitman.

So, what will it be ? First of all, a collaboration of 4 artists : Whitman (obviously, posthomously collaborating with us !), Chendra, Dian Rosita (Tita) and me . But do you really call it collaboration ? There is only one element that unites us all, Whitman's lines.
Anyway, I was with them today while they took those photos. We did it in the studio of Middlesex University where Chendra is studying. By the way, it is built in the most beautiful English countryside and the daffodils are about to expose their charm. Everytime Chendra does something, he amazes me . Tita couldn't stop clicking her camera today, since Chendra never ran out of ideas of posing, sculpting and shaping his lean body, moving, dancing . What was just a small piece for a birthday gift is now an important piece for me. He has his own interpretation of Whitman, but that's what will make this piece fresh and new. And I think (not sure, though) that this is his first self-choreography for still-pictures. So, now am very much looking forward for listening, and watching, "The Sleepers". Will it work ? Or will it be a failure of another experimental collaborative work of art ?

35th anniversary of Tante Ann & oom Eddy

Today I chatted (to be precise : gossipped) with Ruth, from the Jakarta Conservatory of Music, telling me that it's the 35th anniversary of tante Anneke and her husband. Tante Anneke is our sweet (well, most of the time) managing director, but also doing all the other jobs at the administration office, all the scheduling ..... in short, everything but teaching ! So, congratulations, tante & oom Eddy .

As a gift, I want to write a love song, so I browsed again the poems of Sapardi Djoko Damono, with whose poems I am having a big crush on these days (please check my entry a few days ago). Found 2 short poems which I would like to set into one continuous piece of music for mezzosoprano & piano, "to tante Ann & oom Eddy for their 35 years of happiness". Of course I haven't got permission from the great poet, but I just hope that I could get his email and ask him ( cross my fingers that he will give his permission, especially in uniting those 2 poems !) . Anyway, I set a target of writing 35 bars of music to be scanned and sent by email to the happy couple, and I managed to write 37. Am not going to tell you now which poems they are ... for superstitional reasons . The piece has to be finished first . I wrote this post right after I sent the email to them with those 37 bars.

By the way, I have also finished setting Chendra's poem "Saksi" two days ago, but in such a different character ! The piano part is very, VERY virtuosic. There is a prelude which last for perhaps 30 seconds, which is quite scary when I look at the finished page. Completely black full of running notes ! Well, it's inspired by the storm, so, what else can I do ? The piece wrote itself !

Tomorrow Rohan de Saram will arrive and will stay at my place (with his Guarneri cello which costs .....half a million euros !!! (that was the estimation of his cello in the year 2000 ... so, it has gone up since then ..). Make sure you turn on the alarm and lock the doors at night, Andy ...) before we travel together to Madrid on Sunday. So, 4 days of rehearsals. No musing and toying with other people's poems. By the way, we are premiering a work (another Love Song ! Everybody's talking about love these days ... or is it because we already are practically in the age of Aquarius ??) by Jesus Rueda and a 3-movement work by Geoffrey King.