Original interview with Indonesia Tatler, Jan. 2012

Now that one of Indonesia's most prestigious lifestyle magazine Indonesia Tatler has published the February edition, I can post here the original (meaning the one that I sent them) interview which was then edited, cut and published in their January edition. Due to the limited space, the one published was just around half of the original interview, so enjoy this one.

1. New year concerts are common happening in Europe & America. Did the annual happenings intrigue you to create one in Indonesia? Why? Please elaborate.

Yes, I "stole" those ideas, but only the idea, not the content. We have to adapt it to Indonesia's situation, tradition and culture, therefore it's not done every 1st of January, but every first Sunday since our second edition in 2006. This year, since Jan. 1st falls on a Sunday, we do it on the 8th in Jakarta since people are still having holiday out of town during the first week. Also we want to make the program content as Indonesian as possible, as London does it as English possible and Vienna as Austrian possible. It would make no sense to make a new year concert with a Western content, as foreign people came to our concert to "feel" Indonesian as those who do to Vienna, Amsterdam etc. It has now become a landmark in Jakarta, and starting this year we do it in Surabaya (13th) and Bandung (15th) too, therefore the "J" in JNYC is changed from Jakarta to Java.

2. What are the pieces to be presented at the concert?

This is a groundbreaking program in Indonesia, never been done even in our 6 JNYC's before: two operas in one show: A Real Man and Suddenly Rich. We are taking a big risk here, since operas are still considered both "extremely high brow" and "boring" (too long? in a foreign language?) to Indonesian audience. The reasons we dare to do this are: 1. both operas are short (half an hour each) and in Indonesian, so the audience would understand. 2. Both are taken from two popular short stories by Indonesia's "father of short stories" Putu Wijaya, and the plots are quite simple, light but profound (both discussing single themes: the first about "what is a real man" and the second "if you have to choose, which one do you prefer: money or happiness?"). 3. Both are presented as comedies with twists in the end, so I hope this will bring joy and not a heavy burden for the audience. Imagine starting the new year watching a horror or thriller opera! Hopefully this will not only attract music lovers, but also literature fans as well as dance fans (Chendra Panatan, my favorite choreographer graduate from England is doing the stage direction and choregraphy).
The singers are considered the best young vocalists of today in Indonesia, since they have brilliantly won prizes at the "Ananda Sukarlan National Vocal Competition" 2011. They are still unknown, but they are THE Indonesian classical singers of the near future. Remember these names: Evelyn Merrelita (soprano coloratura), Eriyani Tenga Lunga (mezzosoprano) and two tenors Adi "Didut" Nugroho and Pharel Silaban. And let's not forget one thing: the Bank Indonesia Auditorium is not often open for public concerts, but in fact it is definitely the best hall, acoustically speaking as well as its luxurious design, for chamber music and chamber opera in Indonesia. It's amazingly good.

3. Any particular reason for the choice? Please elaborate.

Answered above, right?

4. Appreciation to classical music in Indonesia is growing. There are more concerts now as well as new venues - ie Aula Simfonia. How did you perceive it? How did you compare it with those in South Korea and Japan?

We are still way far behind those countries, since we lack one crucial thing: music education at school. It's true that we have audience that flock to classical concerts nowadays, but I bet you they are always the same people. I dare to say, perhaps around the maximum 3000 people in Jakarta who go to those concerts. Now, that's a very small percentage of the total inhabitants of Jakarta, right? And in my case, many expatriates are among the audience.

5. Does working with top musicians abroad means anything to you? Why? Tell us of your unforgettable moments with them.

Of course. I learned a lot not only from their immense knowledge but also their professionalism, musical craftmanship and artistry, not mentioning their contagious passion in what they are doing. It's amazing how, as a 20-year-old boy I learned about musical structures (the real one, not the one we learn from books) and how we play with psychological time and durations directly from masters such as Sir Michael Tippett, who saw the enormous potential inside me but also, in a nice and subtle way, told me that I was wasting my talent then and I should focus on less things. Greatness comes not from a huge talent, but severe self-criticism, hard work, passion, modesty and willingness to constantly go out of our comfort zone. And of course people like him really helped my career as he was the first "living legend" I met and the one who introduced me to the BBC for the first time, for example.

6. England has The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Does Indonesia need one? Why? Please elaborate.

We have already many orchestras, mostly not up to standards. We need quality, not quantity to represent Indonesia. What is more urgent is establishing the identity of Indonesian classical music and only good quality musicians can inspire composers to do that. And then we need public and sponsors who believe in supporting our own musicians, and understand that classical music indeed originates from Europe, but every country has developed its own identity of it. Indonesia has not. That's why me and my friends started those competitions for piano and voice, giving platforms for young musicians to manifest their talents regardless of where they come from and to help them start their career and to be known to a wider public.

7. In the days of 'Orde Lama' there were designs to build an art centre plus a concert hall in the class of l'Opera de Paris in the area surrounding Museum Nasional, Jakarta. Is it time to start again with the project? How instrumental is the opening of such a grand venue in enhancing the development of performing arts? Please explain.

Of course, but we have to pay much attention to acoustics. Again, we have many theatres, but very few with the good condition for presenting classical music without sound system. As long as the architect doesn't consider the hall's acoustics as a musical instrument, it is doomed to be a failure. Look, in a piano recital there are two musical instruments: the piano AND the hall. That has never been thought like that by architects in Indonesia. And as you consult a pianist if you want to buy a piano, you should consult (classical) musicians when you build a concert hall.

Isn't it (suddenly) rich? Are we a pair?

Now that my opera MENDADAK KAYA ("Suddenly Rich") is almost finished less than 2 months before its premiere, I dare to write my thoughts about it. Unintentionally it sounds much more "masculine" than Laki-Laki Sejati. Of course there are melancholic parts especially when Alung, the guy who visited the witchdoctor to ask for wealth, realized that he wasn't as happy as when he was poor. But mostly it has very strong rhythmic elements, and I (over?)exploited the "rap" influence throughout the piece.

I have been fascinated how composers "steal" foreign elements outside himself and transformed it into his own. As for rap, Sir Michael Tippett has done it in his last opera, "New Year", and what you hear there is just Tippett. You sort of know that it's taken from rap, but it's become so Tippett. I hope I succeeded in stealing rap into my own music in my opera.

The piano part is surprisingly (even for me) virtuosic. Lots of notes and quite thick. In fact I am toying the idea of taking the whole overture and extend it (doesn't need much more, though!) into an Etude, most probably my 6th etude. The score of the opera will be more than 60 pages because of those notes on the piano. Influences come from Stravinsky, Ligeti and even some Philip Glass creeped in.

I am using, in some parts, a new mode which I am deeply attracted to these days which is a mix of lydian and mixolydian mode. So it's a whole tone from the third to the fourth note AND another whole tone from the last note back to the tonic (which means a half tone from the 6th to the 7th note). It sounds very peculiar, sort of oriental but weird. I use it when the witchdoctor is being possessed, or exorcised perhaps.

Anyway, I wonder how the tenors Pharel J. Silaban and Adi "Didut" Nugroho are taking this. My repertoire for tenor is quite limited in fact, so it's another surprising fact that I am writing an opera for 2 tenors! I have known them for a while now, and it's a big stimulation for me that they are really nice people; both don't "act like tenors", so I am very much looking forward to working with them. There will be female dancers involved as well here, ad.lib. Much more acting is demanded in Mendadak Kaya compared to Laki-Laki Sejati and of course the choreography of the female dancers, so Chendra Panatan will have to work harder. This is not just a dialogue; the witchdoctor has to be "possessed" and Alung comes and goes as both a rich and poor, happy and unsatisfied person, and singing rap should involve a bit of dancing or at least a typical "rap" gesture. Oh God, forgive me for I have sinned ...

Just when I finish writing this Chendra appeared in my chat room. Apparently, two months before the show, tickets are selling quite well. (The "early bird" period just finished yesterday and apparently many tickets are sold) and he asked me about the possibility of a second performance. So, next Monday the 21st we will contact the hall (Auditorium of Bank Indonesia) and see if we can do another performance on the 9th of January, the day after the premiere. It will be a Monday, not a good day for a performance, but we'll see ...

Mendadak Kaya will be premiered at the Java New Year Concerts, Bank Indonesia Auditorium on January 8th, 4 p.m. together as a double-bill with my other opera Laki-Laki Sejati. It will be repeated in Bandung (hence we changed "Jakarta" into "Java" in the event's name which is already held for the 7th time now) on the 15th of January without Laki-Laki Sejati. Laki-Laki Sejati itself (without Mendadak Kaya) will be performed in Surabaya on January 13th. Tweet me at @anandasukarlan if you are confused with this ...and I'll give you a more complete info.

Pain and pleasure (Violence in music)

I am glad that Laki-Laki Sejati's world premiere went so well, much more than I imagined. The singers, Indah Pristanti & Evelyn Merrelita performed their roles so brilliantly, technically and interpretatively speaking. Everyone adored their passion, their high expressivity, their total dedication, and some media have even written about "a discovery of new & brilliant talents". Erza ST of the Jakarta Post mentioned about both of them: "Evelyn not only excelled in performing this challenging part, but she did it in an elegant and effortless manner. Indah Pristanti’s velvety voice was the right combination with Evelyn’s, and together they gave a remarkable and harmonious performance."

What's next? Lots of things. Laki-laki Sejati (LLS) suddenly is in everybody's tongue and is now well in demand, with further new productions in Surabaya and another in THE classical music concert of the year: The Jakarta New Year Concert (JNYC). Everyone involved in the production of this event told me that Laki-Laki Sejati is just tailor-made for the typical JNYC audience: a "high-brow" one eager to have a light but classy entertainment. I don't want to call myself or my music classy, but certainly the quality of the performance up to the minute details (plus the posh costumes by Alleira Batik) can be defined as one.

But LLS is just half an hour long. So I have to do another thing to fill up the other half of the program. The program would then be an operatic double-bill. Therefore I am hard working on my next opera at the moment, again from a short story of Putu Wijaya, called Mendadak Kaya ("Suddenly rich"). It is a very Indonesian story about a guy who visits a witchdoctor, asking the latter to make him rich. His wish is always fulfilled, but something wrong always happens so he keeps coming back to "correct" his wish, which then make us delve into the psychology of the rich and the poor and the concept of happiness. But you're wrong if you think that this is just a typical money-doesn't-buy-happiness type of story. As usual with Putu Wijaya's stories, it is full of twists and philosophical ideas. This opera will be for an unusual formation of 2 tenors, and will be sung by winners of "Tembang Puitik" Ananda Sukarlan Vocal Award, Pharel Silaban and Adi "Didut" Nugroho.

I am trying to do a different kind of "humor" here, more of a slapstick one. That's why I've been watching a lot of cartoon movies these days, mostly my all time favorite Tom & Jerry and therefore I discovered the new element in music: violence. Of course you can hear those violent characters in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Britten's War Requiem and everywhere in Shostakovich and Prokofiev's music, but what I want to tell you here is the impact to us, getting pleasure from listening to it. In the extreme case, of course you can get it in rock music.
Visually speaking, one might not be aware (especially children) that there are a lot of violence in cartoon movies. How many times Jerry is smashed by Tom (and vice versa), how many times Tom bumps into a door and countless scenes like that? All those are accompanied by abrupt changes in music, which could work well even without the visual scenes.

The psychological impact of music to our lives is much much stronger than we could imagine. As music can make us better people, it can also make us extract the potential violence and all other dirty rubbish in our psyche. I am not talking about the violence in the words or text of a song, I am talking about the musical elements itself: It is odd to remember that Stalin got very nervous to the violence in the music of Shostakovich, while we know that he was a ruthless dictator. Up to a certain limit, I think the violence in music is a good cathartic method to relieve our anger, just as we like to listen to sad music or watch a sad movie when we are feeling blue. But as anything else, if it is too much (especially in classical music where it can easily carry you away) things could get out of hand eh?

The real man's been fussy

Whatever my next opera is, it's definitely gonna be an all-male cast. And I'll write lots of falsetti! Huff ... during the creative process of Laki-Laki Sejati, those soprano voics (especially the coloratura one, the "mom") is banging in my head ... and it is LOUD AND HIGH! So I definitely miss those low, male voice who do those beautifully weird falsetto sometimes.
They say the older you get the more fussy you become. Perhaps that's true. Laki-Laki Sejati at last took longer to write than I imagined. According to my plan, the music is about 24 minutes long, so I estimated between 24-30 days to compose it.

I got back home just 10 days ago, and I just emailed the whole score to the singers yesterday. During my 16-hour plane trip home I completely finished the vocal lines, and sketched the accompaniment. But it took me a whole week to clean up all the mess, revise, write down the accompaniment and the most important thing is the finishing touch. I wonder why I am getting fussier now. When I wrote "Ibu, yang anaknya diculik itu" (The Mother whose son was kidnapped) with a kinda similar formation I remembered I wasn't like this. IBU was a bit longer (around 40 minutes, almost twice longer than Laki-Laki Sejati) but I wrote it in less than two months. True, at that time (in 2009) there weren't any distractions, and now the work has been so many times interrupted. Since June when I started writing Laki-Laki Sejati I also wrote several songs, piano pieces to be included in "Alicia's Second Piano Book", orchestrating Fons Juventatis (a 5-minute overture for piano & orchestra) AND performing it, wrote my 4-hand piece for the inauguration of the Berlin-Jakarta Festival as well as finishing "A Sicilian Diary" for 3 flutes which is not a small piece, and did a few concerts (mostly of my pieces, so I didn't have to practice a lot). Those aren't big tasks, but if one adds them up, they do take some time. And I spent almost the whole summer in Jakarta, so the traffic jam didn't help either. I can compose on a plane, but not in a car during the traffic jam.

One thing which was also rather "not my nature" is the comic side of Laki-Laki Sejati. I had to invent ways to make the funny parts funny, and those spots didn't flow easily, I tell you. But I learned a lot anyway in exploring the "funny" side in me.

By the way, the wifi aboard the airplane is a nice invention, but what I need is electricity to charge my laptop battery! I had to write lots of music on paper while I was on board, and copy and elaborate them when my feet are on the ground here back home. I can survive hours without internet, but I need more than 2 hours to compose on my laptop, so please airplane makers, would you consider some holes to plug my laptop cable?

Not funny!

I'm glad I've overcome my "sick" ambition of proving to the (Indonesian) audience that I have written more music than just "Dalam Doaku", or that there are pieces of mine which I myself believe to be better than that. Dalam Doaku, for me, is just a product of lonely nights in a Belgian hotel and a kind of self-therapy for my bad mood. I write what I believe, my music is part of me and just let the audience have their own opinion. As usual when one's being honest, some people don't like what you say (I am grateful that in this case it's the other way around). In a much bigger scale it has happened in the history too: The Spanish Joaquin Rodrigo is remembered by one movement (not even the whole piece) of his "Aranjuez" Guitar Concerto, and many people know Rachmaninov through his one short piece, the Prelude in C minor.

So I have stopped trying to make my pocket opera in progress, Laki-Laki Sejati (LLS), an attempt to convert the audience of Dalam Doaku to like this instead. To start with, LLS is a duet for soprano and mezzosoprano, whose colours when combined wouldn't be as tear-jerking as a duet of male and female being in love with each other. There are indeed some "romantic" arias in LLS, especially for the young girl, but those are expressions of craving of love and dreaming of an ideal man, so the love is, shall we say, unreal.

LLS is a comedy, so I am confronted with the issue: how do you make music funny? You can be funny with words or gestures, but in music? And is "funny" an adjective which means you should laugh to? Even in comedies you have different kinds of humor: cheap humor, slapsticks, and even satires base themselves in humor, a black one that is. And then you have the British ironic humor, the Latin over-the-top exaggerating ones and I think I start to understand the Indonesian ones. And why is it that comedians usually are depressed people (the famous example is Pagliacci the weeping clown; and you know Rowan "Mr.Bean" Atkinson just came out of a long depression period, right?) ?

The key is, I think, incongruity. Things are not in their right places or their right moments, incorrect proportions, strange situations. In German, the word "komisch" reflects it perfectly: it doesn't have to be funny, it's just about something wrong, incongruent and strange while in English, "comical" is indeed funny.

So I think that's the key to make the music "funny". In my opera, you'll hear the girl blindly in love, singing 3 arias consecutively. Each aria is just normal, but put together, I hope they will sound "unproportional": too much, over the top. No operas before have asked the same singer to sing 3 arias, real ones, one after the other. Not even in Broadway musicals. And that is just one example of making incongruences in music. I am having fun in doing some research on this. I don't have a bassoon to play that "Sorcerer's Apprentice" tune nor a tuba imitating an elephant, but I am sure I can do it with just two fantastic singers and my poor old piano.