Everything changes

Now, only now, the end of January, that we could really feel the winter. Blizzard, strong winds, rain and hail the whole day. It's been a warm winter since I came back to Spain, 10 days ago. With such laziness for going outside, I am re-reading, for the n-th time, Ovid's Metamorphosis. Ah yes, have you heard our latest performance of 2 of my pieces inspired by that? Check it out here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U97fRuNuq9c . I did it with my new friends, John Ferrillo (oboe) and James Sommerville (french horn) from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. .............................................................................................................................................. I made a series of pieces for wind instruments inspired, and based on, characters from Ovid's M. The others are Deianira, whose beauty is the source of her unhappiness for bassoon solo, Arachne the great weaver (clarinet and piano), Narcissus Dying and Rescuing Ariadne (both for flute and piano). Rereading M again, I feel like composing more pieces, this time for other instruments. But first I wanna share with you my thoughts about Ovid and his M. The nice thing about M is that it's so jam-packed that you don't even have to read it all the way through; if you want a taste of what it's about, you can pretty much start anywhere you want, or just look in the index to find your favorite myths, and go straight to those. I can say that it has no plot, or clear storyline. In this way, it's sort of like an all-you-can-eat buffet – with the difference that, once you get hooked, you're likely to go ahead and eat the whole thing. M begins with the creation of the world, which he describes in a mixture of scientific and supernatural terms. Then he talks about the creation of human beings, the Four Ages of early humanity (Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron), followed by the Great Flood that wiped out all human life except for a Greek guy named Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha. After Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulate the earth, Ovid starts talking about various strange occurrences involving gods, demigods, and mortals, all centering on moments of transformation from one physical state to another. In theory, these stories follow each other in time, though in practice it gets more complicated, as there are lots of flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks. This sounds confusing, but is actually really cool n fun to read. In fact, that is what makes it really cool n fun to read. It reminds me of SAMAN by the Indonesian favorite writer of mine, Ayu Utami. It goes back and forth like crazy :) . And that's why I like composing characters from M : I can just write short pieces from any page of the book. Although there are sections, like the creation of the world, which sounds as a whole orchestra with many brass instruments in it. Maybe I'll do it when I get a commission to do an orchestral work next time. .............................................................................................................................................. Ovid himself, born Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18) , was educated in law, and he insisted that his older brother who died young (and also educated in law) had a greater gift for eloquence. Oh you can just google Ovid to know more about him. Anyway, M keeps fascinating me, and in fact there is just one underlying theme throughout the whole 15 books, which is exactly the title, which I would translate into "everything changes". M captures and engages the reader because of, not in spite of, its size and scope. All humans here are transformed into stones, gods, animals etc. etc. In fact, just like real modern life. Nobody is who (s)he is. Life is beautiful because of, not in spite of, all the tragedies happening in it.

The flute, all the flute and nothing but the flute

After a highly exciting concert (+discussions +lunch +gossipping) of JAKFlute (the Jakarta Flute Community whose members are always growing) at my place, the Ananda Sukarlan Center last Sunday July 31st, my sheet music with all my chamber & solo works involving the flute is now officially published. It was launched during that concert last Sunday. Its title is "Narcissus Dying and other works for flute(s)". It took me several days to decide on the cover. The most natural is of course using John William Waterhouse's painting of Narcissus as it was the painting that helped me shape the piece. At last I cropped the painting "Echo and Narcissus" of Waterhouse, took only the Narcissus part as its cover. All my flute music are connected with someone (mostly flutists), except "Rescuing Ariadne" which really just popped up from the blue. Well, Titian's painting was the trigger, but I didn't specifically write it for someone. There are 8 titles in that book: -Narcissus Dying (now becoming my most popular work for flute) -Rescuing Ariadne -My recently premiered "The Sicilian Diary" for 3 flutes -You Had Me at Hello (3 movements for flute solo, for Chendra Panatan's choreography) -Vega & Altair's Love Song (for flute & harp) -2 pieces for piccolo solo, for Rudy & Liz's 2 boys -Prelude & Intermezzo from my opera "Ibu yang anaknya diculik itu", which is original written for flute & piano. Therefore this is not an arrangement -Choreographic prelude to "Bibirku Bersujud di bibirmu". Now this title is missing on the score, but written down in the index of the book. This piece is a prelude (but can be performed separately) from my piece for soprano & piano based on the highly moving poem of Hasan Aspahani. Aaaand ... I will use this opportunity to thank my flutty friends: Liz Ashford, Wendela van Swol, Roberto Alvarez, Mesty Ariotedjo who is also the ambassador of our dear Indonesian Classical Music Foundation (YMSI), founders of JakFlute Metta F.Ariono & Marini Marnoto, my new flutty friend Andika Candra and many more flutists who have played my music. I learned a lot from listening to you all playing it, and glad that you include my music in your repertoire. Hope my music can enrich the tutti flutty world!

Ariadne Rescued ... in Spain

Next month my friend from our conservatory days --and now a reputable flutist living in Cordoba-- Wendela van Swol will give the Spanish premiere of my flute and piano Rescuing Ariadne, accompanied by pianist Emilio Jose Garcia. One of their concerts will be during the Spanish Flute Convention in Madrid where it will be a concentration of flutists around the world with 3 full days of concerts, discussions and masterclasses. And they made me realize that with several performances done in the past, I haven't written any program notes on the piece, so this entry is dedicated to them.

Rescuing Ariadne was inspired by a painting by Titian at the National Gallery of London. I don't know why that particular painting was particularly inspiring to me, among the other fascinating paintings hanging there. Its luscious colours certainly triggered some of the harmonic progressions in my piece, and I also had in mind the story behind it while composing. Therefore the piece was divided into 3 continuous sections :

1. depicting both anger and sadness of Ariadne being alone in the island of Naxos. There are many short flute cadenzas here.

2. the arrival of Bacchus. As one can expect when a handsome god meets a beautiful goddess, they immediately fall in love, and thanks to this process we get the story of him rescuing her out of the island. I especially like the beginning of the "love tune" where the piano repeats a figure twice and then the flute answers with the same figure : it's so kitch! As if one asked "Do you love me? Do you love me?" and the other answered : "Yeah I do love you". If you have this dialogue in mind, you'll get the exact rubato that's needed.

3. obviously their adventure of escaping from Naxos. I use my favorite meter of 10/16 as the ending.

I don't think one should bear this story in mind while listening to the music, since I hope that the music can speak for itself without any programmatic background, and I do realize that both Titian's painting and the story are too big for my 5-minute little piece. Some people have asked me questions why I didn't simply put Titian's title for my piece, hence "Bacchus and Ariadne", and my answer is that 1. Albert Roussel has done justice to the painting by writing his Third Symphony (yes, a whole symphony and not a 5+ minute piece) with that title. 2. I did concentrate on the figure of Ariadne, and not on Bacchus while writing my piece.

And somehow I had (and still have) the strange feeling that this piece would be the first movement of a kind of suite for flute and piano. It just feels that way. There are materials in the piece that can still be exploited to make it a complete piece of, say, 3 movements. But I haven't got the time, opportunity and inspiration to write another one (my "Prelude and Interlude" from my opera IBU, also for flute and piano, has nothing to do with this). Especially now, when I am extremely late in finishing my third opera. Rehearsals starting in mid-April and .. ehm .. nobody involved in the opera has received any note from me (sssh, don't tell!). Anybody got Mozart's phone number??

Book of faces, Midori and my string quartet

Today, officially the tickets for Java New Year Concert in Jakarta, January 4th are completely SOLD OUT. I would like to congratulate the whole team of JNYC for this. Chendra Panatan, my manager, choreographer, and head of the team of JNYC, has experimented a new method for the publicity for this concert : we don't spend any cent in publicity on newspapers or other mass media. He does it all through the internet, especially facebook. And I must admit, I hated Facebook up till a few weeks ago. Chendra convinced me of facebook a few months ago, by saying that my greatest idol with the great baritone voice, Barack Obama has done a most successful presidential campaign through Facebook. If he does it, then it must be correct.

Preparations are going well. The young pianists who will perform are at their best stamina. My flute and piano piece, "Rescuing Ariadne" was the last piece I rehearsed with. The players will be the English flutist Elizabeth Ashford and the young pianist from Bandung, Alfred Young Sugiri. This 5-minute piece was inspired by the painting of Titian, "Bacchus and Ariadne", hang in the National Gallery of London. Why the title ? Well, because Albert Roussel's Third Symphony (great piece, by the way) is titled as the painting, and I don't want to make a piece with the same title.

The soprano Bernadeta Astari has arrived from Holland, and we performed today at the Federasi Teater Indonesia some of my songs, including the one based on a poem of WS Rendra, Tidurlah Intan. We chatted with him afterwards.

Several days ago the Japanese legendary violinist Midori played my short string quartet "Lontano" with 3 other young musicians (from Singapore, Australia and USA) at the residence of the ambassador of Japan in Jakarta. Her foundation, Music Sharing (based in New York) commissioned it last year and I already finished it before summer this year. After this performance they then toured it to Jogja and Medan, and then to Japan. I didn't have time to rehearse with them beforehand, so I was rather nervous before the concert (and they played Debussy's --which is my all time favorite, adored, admired quartet-- as the last piece, which was the first time I heard live). But then they played so marvellously that they took my breath away. Still, nobody could beat the greatness of Debussy ; I admire that Frenchman more and more thru the years. What a f***ing genius !!

After the New Year Concerts, I will face my biggest challenge : writing music for solo guitar, commissioned by the fantastic Spanish guitarist Miguel Trapaga.