A short note to all winners, my colleagues

Just came back from Surabaya, after the exhilarating, exciting and inspiring National Vocal Competition Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan (TPAS) for the whole weekend last week, organized as always by its initiator, Amadeus Performing Arts and its director Patrisna May Widuri. My impressions? Too much, too many to be written in words. Basically, I am more than happy to listen to all (yes, ALL) participants. Their vocal techniques are pretty accomplished. The only problems for some of them lie on their understanding of the music they sing, the interpretation and the grip for the style of the music. But each vocalist has something in them, and if I were obliged to write music for their voice, I know what kind of music suits for each and every one of them since they all have strong characters. As I always say, I can catch any elements in every artists in of all sorts and quality to inspire me. ............................................................................................................................................ But what's next, for those enthusiastic young vocalists, especially the "winners"? Well, I guess they should know that the last week's competition is the lightest, easiest thing they have done for their career, nothing compared to the real competition that awaits them now: the real life competition. It is right now that the real competition starts. Yes, of course all, or perhaps 99,9% of all musicians having a musical career today had gone through some kinda competition, whether it is purely as such, or auditions of some kind. While competitions are something normal in Europe, the Americas or already in many countries in Asia, it is still quite new in Indonesia, where we had, and still have the tradition of engaging artists based on family relations or friendships, not on objective qualities of the musician. For my new Violin Concerto to be premiered next month with the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra I had to hold an audition through youtube, and the winner was a young violinist of 17, Amadeus Giovani Biga who I didn't know at all before. I wouldn't be able to get his kind of quality among my relatives or friends. Many musicians are still weary, not to say afraid, to join one, and I even cannot think of a competition for instruments other than piano and voice here in Indonesia. Even some music teachers still prohibit their students to join one for being afraid of "losing". Well, if the only thing that matters is being the prizewinner, then I would discourage you to join one. Imagine, there will be only one, yes ONE winner among all the participants, no matter if there are 10 or 100 participants. What's the use, then? The answer is that being the first, absolute prize winner in a competition does not guarantee anything. Oh, then competitions are even more useless? Whazza diff between being the winner and the losers? Wait, wait. Read my thoughts further below and hope you'll understand my point. ............................................................................................................................................ TPAS hopefully would serve as the first step of their looong musical career journey upwards. Our previous (TPAS 2011) winners have gone to different directions, all upwards. Indah Pristanti (Senior Female winner) continues her voice studies in Vienna. Adi "Didut" Nugroho is enjoying his new career, not far from singing: becoming the conductor of the ITB University Choir, and still sings some times. Evelyn Merrelita stays in Surabaya, but is now the darling of our capital city; she's been invited several times to be a soloist by the Indonesia Opera Society, Nusantara Symphony Orchestra in Jakarta and all 3 of them have had the leading roles in my chamber operas. ............................................................................................................................................ But is it that nice 'n easy? Oh no, my dear. There is one thing that no competitions in the whole universe could do to filter the best musicians, and that is ATTITUDE. You can sing until all the windows break, you can move your fingers on the piano faster than the speed of light, you can win all the competitions on this planet and the others, but if your attitude is not exemplary, you won't make it as a musician. I will tell you the real truth: the more you become successful, the more "friends" you will have. Those "friends" will try to pull you down, since you are higher than them. They will stab you in your back, since that is where their position is: behind you. They laugh at you because you are different or outstanding, coz they want you to be the same as anybody else. They like to talk bad things about you, and if they can't find bad things, they will invent them, coz it comforts them, it soothes their worries. Remember : they don't hate you. They really really adore you, so much that they want to become you. It's called envy, and it comes from admiration, but a negative one. And you can defend yourselves from those things, my friends, with your attitude. The only way to eliminate your enemies is to make them your friends. Now, THAT you don't learn in ANY music schools on this planet. Remember, they consider you better than them from the musical point of view. But if you don't have a good attitude, you are definitely worse than them. As a human being. And in the end, that's what counts. Unfortunately, the most common mistake for upcoming young musicians is mingling with other people's business. You know why? Coz what people think or talk about you is NOT your business at all, it's THEIR business. So let them do their business, and you, my friends, yeah, you go on with your life. You, my friends, have a wonderful future ahead of you, having such big talents and coming from the richest country in the world which I am proud of. Show the world how great is Indonesian culture, and how you can give something that nobody else can give. You don't only share music in your life. "Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give, I give myself. I exist as I am, that is enough" (Walt Whitman) ............................................................................................................................................ Winners of the TPAS 2013 are listed at https://www.facebook.com/groups/361289260607185/ . Congratulations not only to Isyana Sarasvati, Theodora Amabel Beatrice, Widhawan Aryo Praditha & Nikodemus Lukas Hariono who won 1st prizes in their respective categories, but to all participants. By daring to participate and challenge yourself, you are already a winner. At least for me, coz I'm like that too, and I'm proud to have you as my colleagues and friends.

The most powerful inspirer (continuing my previous article)

I always say, no matter how powerful someone, a piece of art or an event can inspire you to create an artistic product, the biggest inspirer of all time (and it never fails) is THE DEADLINE. Since Erstwhile is an intense essay about love, I have put the Valentine's Day this year for my own deadline to finish the voice parts. Well I missed 2 days, but since it's my own deadline, it wasn't as inspiring as deadlines which are imposed by external forces :) .......................................................................................................................................... Therefore all the soloists, even the choir, have received their parts through email by now. The orchestration, especially the orchestral sections without singers involved, is not finished ; I guess it will be finished just when I have to send the parts to the orchestral musicians next month, as I have this sick obsession of revising and re-re-re-revising my music before the musicians get the score. Oh, I didn't tell you the names of the soloists involved, right? Well, you would know their names since they are all the winners of the National Voice Competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" (TPAS) 2011, but mostly not the ones who sang in my previous chamber comedy operas MENDADAK KAYA and LAKI-LAKI SEJATI. So, they are : Ivan Jonathan (as Rafael), Evelyn Merrelita (as Madame Vaillant) -- both are characters living in the 21st century, in fact they met aboard the Singapore Airlines. The ones from the 13th and 14th century are Albertus James Sofyan (as Picaro), Christine Tambunan (as Soléne) and Anggana Bunawan (who only sing 2 arias but playing the role of 2 characters, as Gajah Mada -- a historical character from the Majapahit era in Indonesia -- and as a priest at the Notre Dame Church). All characters of the story, except Gajah Mada, are purely fictional, and any resemblances with real life characters or happenings (such as a broken heart of 7 centuries!) are purely coincidental. As I wrote you before, Erstwhile is a work in progress, so at the moment it will just be recorded and performed in a "concertante" way, although I do ask the singers to do some very small gestures (such as shaking hands when they first met, and other things that connect each other at the duets). Will they wear concert costumes or theatrical ones in the premiere? I still dunno. .......................................................................................................................................... Ah, talking about the National Voice Competition, in case you are a vocalist, you might be interested in joining the next one, in September this year in Surabaya. The city is coincidentally very close to one of the locations where Erstwhile took place, but that's not the reason. It is simply because the initiator, founder and executor of the competition happens to be Amadeus Performing Arts, a company based in Surabaya. You can tweet them to @KompetisiTPAS for more info, and do be quick since I heard that the end of this month February is the last day to register for the "early birds" (this term couldn't be more appropriate for you singers who sing like nightingales!). Anyway, I am so proud and happy to know and work with the previous winners, they are amazingly and surprisingly brilliant, but am still curious in discovering new & unknown great new vocal talents. They are another source of inspiration for me, just like deadlines. And I love those inspiring vocalists. In fact, I love all people and everything else that inspires me, except deadlines. Unfortunately we have to know the difference between love and inspiration ; you don't have to love the people (or things) that inspires you. That, my friends, is what you call life.

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.

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.

What's a real man?

OK, it's now official. Scarily official. I have started writing my next opera, this time a real mini pocket opera, and I am happy to tell about it. It will be for 2 singers (mezzo-soprano & soprano) and I (or for the future productions another pianist) will accompany it. No other instruments except some small percussions which I bring with myself. It will be produced by its commissioner, Bimasena, in October this year.

This opera is based on a very short story by Putu Wijaya, a renowned Indonesian writer who has written more than 1000 short stories. The title, which will also be for my opera, is Laki-laki Sejati (A real man), and the story is a dialogue between a mother (a (high) soprano who's wisdom is solidly based on her knowledge of men!) and her daughter in her late teens (sung by a mezzosoprano or high alto who --unfortunately-- can be (much) older than that, since it does happen, and often, in real life) who is desperate on having a boyfriend. The story starts with her asking her mom, "Mom, what is in fact a real man?" and ends with a catchy conclusion of what, or where, or how, a real man is indeed.

I spent most of the time during my flight from Bilbao to Jakarta last weekend in making the plans from Putu Wijaya's script. I am now waiting for his approval of my cuts and small editions, which will make the duration of the opera about 24 minutes. In fact I have been looking for a script with 3 characters involved, one of them a male, since I am writing this to be premiered by the winners of the Ananda Sukarlan Vocal Competition (Tembang Puitik AS) last April: coloratura soprano Evelyn Merrelita, mezzosoprano Indah Pristanti and the tenor Adi Nugroho, the latter had performed with me 2 months ago in Magelang and will again do so in Makassar, hopefully in October. After I browsed Putu Wijaya's many short stories (for a long time I've been thinking to do something with his works) I found this kind of tragi-comedy, brilliantly written by this Balinese writer, and decided to do this for now. Adi Nugroho will have to wait, but I am sure I'll get hold of a nice script for an opera for him to be involved.

It will be too soon to say more about Laki-laki Sejati, since I barely written the notes (I did start a chaconne for an introduction to an aria for the mezzosoprano on the plane), but I really would like to discover "the other side of me" with this opera, not me who people call "romantic". I refuse to be called a romantic. I prefer to be like Winnie the Pooh, a bear of very simple brain who doesn't like difficult words (nor music).

Surabaya Singing

A few days ago this article was published in The Jakarta Globe newspaper, edited as usual. Therefore I post here my original writing, unedited and uncut.




It's just unbelievable that in this country of 200 million people there is yet a classical music voice competition of a national scale, while there is an abundance of great vocal soloists and choirs all over the country. There is even the erroneous term "lagu seriosa" (serious songs) for the genre of classical music songs (and sometimes even opera arias), which automatically condemns the other genres (such as jazz, folk music etc) as "not serious". Sometimes it's not even applied to the genre but to a manner of singing, so that one can sing a pop song in a "seriosa" way, i.e. you should wear a Maria Callas (or even Bianca Castafiore?)-like gown and sing in an incomprehensive and loud voice that will break all the glasses around you. It was a myth in this country until very recently that classical music singers should sing words that were not meant to be understood. Just sing high notes, higher than the seventh heaven but still audible to (break the) human ears, and you'd be accepted in the "seriosa" exclusive club of high art.

Therefore it is highly admirable that Surabaya's Amadeus Performing Arts with its director & founder, that hyperactive lady Patrisna May Widuri would organize a competition of a national scale for classical vocalists. They even use the term which I and a handful of Indonesian classical musicians agreed on for this genre, "Tembang Puitik" (Poetic Songs), since most of the songs of Schubert, Mahler, Britten up to yours truly are based on existing poems and not just inventing and repeating texts as happens in pop music, such as "You're beautiful" (repeated to death) and just ends with "it's true". Let's just use this term "Tembang Puitik" for art-songs (I don't even like this English term, as if, hey, that Spanish flamenco passionate singing is not art or what?) of both Indonesian and international for the future, shall we?

In spite of the name, "Ananda Sukarlan Art-song National Competition" (Kompetisi Nasional Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan), this event was neither my idea nor organized by me. It was 100% Amadeus' iniciative. I was there to serve as the head of the judge, and am honoured to sit with the other jury members Aning Katamsi (should she need an introduction, I could only say that she is Indonesia's most prominent soprano of today) and choir conductor-voice expert-former dean of the Music Faculty of the Satya Wacana University of Salatiga, Agastya Rama Listya.

Although joined by 34 highly talented vocalists from all over Indonesia, 2 cities still stood out for the quantity and quality of their singers: Jakarta & Surabaya. Medan follows behind, but it has its shortcomings: they don't have classically trained teachers to polish the singing techniques. The competition's high artistic & musical demands were the reason why it wasn't a target for beginners or "Indonesian Idol" type of singers.

Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan (TPAS) is planned to be a biennal date for vocalists to meet in Surabaya, so the next one will be held in 2013. My name is used, I guess because quantity-wise I am currently the Indonesian composer who has written the most artsongs; more than 100 until now (no, no, this is by no means an achievement at all. Franz Schubert wrote more than 600 before he died at the early age of 31. And they were waaaay better). About 50 of them were sung by the participants during that weekend.

The competition was split into 2 categories : Professional and Non Professional, and the non-pro one was again split into 4 categories : Junior, Senior Male, Senior Female and Senior 2 (which meant to accomodate singers above 40 but turned out to be not so effective, since there were only 2 participants in this category. We, above 40, have lost the spirit of competitivity, I guess! The organizer, with the consent of the artistic board decided to keep this category to maintain the spirit of tirelessly learning and perfecting the techniques even at this age).

One groundbreaking thing I would like to mention is the way TPAS was introduced, socialized and managed by Amadeus. It was done almost exclusively by the social media, Facebook and Twitter. Since this does not involve a highly lucrative genre of music, most conventional media such as the newspaper, let alone TV stations turned their back on this event. The results of the competition were also announced in real time through twitter while I was announcing the results (both semifinal and final) to a live audience of just a few hundreds at the Petra University Auditorium. This time I let my twitter account @anandasukarlan being "hacked" by them, since among all of us involved I have the dubious honour of having the most followers. But I can assure you that only those few crucial minutes in my tweeting career that "my" tweets were typed by someone else since it would be annoying to the public listening to me reading the results on stage and tweeting at the same time. Apart from those moments my tweets are like my music, typed by my very own 10 fingers. Those tweets of "mine" during the announcement were then numerously retweeted all over the country, and that made me believe that twitter, not a dog, is man's best friend if he loves classical music and arts in this country.

This event, followed minute by minute by literally thousands of classical music lovers throughout the country through social media hopefully demonstrated how badly needed a concert hall is in Surabaya, even a small, decent and simple one. My heart broke when the tenor Ivan Jonathan who turned out to perform excellently had to stop and waited for more than half an hour due to the noise of the heavy rain .. and the electricity failure that "naturally" followed it. One should remember that during that period of waiting he should be always prepared to perform any minute just when the rain stopped and the lights went on, and maintaining that kind of artistic awareness in a tough competition like this is a thing which is not at all to be taken lightly.

As there are 5 categories, so there are 5 first winners in this competition, but for me personally 3 vocalists stood out -- the tenor Adi Nugroho, soprano Indah Pristanti and the coloratura soprano Evelyn Merrelita, each won first prizes in their respective categories. However, since Adi Nugroho won the best interpretation of all my works, he receives the honour (if one calls it so) of giving concerts singing my works organized by my management , accompanied --unfortunately stressful for him, I believe-- by myself.
This has been a big classical music landmark, not only in Surabaya but also nationally. It has certainly put Surabaya on the map. And in our hearts.

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The complete list of winners of Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan National Voice Competition are :

Professional : 1. Evelyn Merrelita 2. Eriyani Tenga Lunga 3. Pharel Silaban

Non professional, cat. JUNIOR : 1. Theodora A. Beatrice 2. Vallerie Chr. Gunawan 3. A. James Sofyan

SENIOR 1 Female: 1. Indah Pristanti 2. Christine M. Tambunan 3. tied between Agatha Stella & Mariska Setiawan

SENIOR 1 Male: 1. Adi Nugroho 2. Ivan Jonathan 3. Anggana Bunawan

SENIOR 2 (over 40 years): 1. Linda Hartono 2. Natalis Sidhanta

Best interpretation & understanding of the music of Ananda Sukarlan : Adi Nugroho

My vocal score "Tembang Puitik" almost sold out

I couldn't believe it myself. My manager, Chendra Panatan told me that my score of 25 songs for voice(s) and piano "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" (see my entry in February 08) have been sold about 900 exemplars. 1000 ex. were printed for the first time last December. Ok, ok, this is far from the amount sold of Harry Potter or Da Vinci code, but for vocal works by an Indonesian composer this is quite unbelievable. To be honest, I am quite surprised, proud, and thankful to the mostly Indonesian singers who have bought my score. And also very grateful that you don't make photocopies out of it !
So, Chendra is considering making a second printing of another 1000. Will he succeed in selling another 1000 ? We sold that amount (no, no, we sold just under 900) in about 4 months. Yeah, this year I will be celebrating my 40th birthday, and many events are being organized everywhere to celebrate it, so there will be opportunities to sell them. Anyway, I know Chendra works miracles, so I told him to go ahead and boldly do it.

Since the score was released, I had written about 20 more songs, for all kinds of voices. And of course, some excerpts from my opera I am writing now can be arranged for voice(s) and piano. So, I am thinking of including them in the new score to be sold. Anyway, thanx guys, for your appreciation for my music ! May God bless you all singing my songs over the rooftops of the world !