The Art of Taking a Break

I don't think I handle the notes much differently from other pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, there is where the artistry lies!! (Artur Schnabel) 

At this point in my life, I am one of those very fortunate people who can say that I really love my work, that I love everything I do and wouldn’t trade them with anything in the world. I’ve found my bliss and even if I win a million-dollar lottery today, I would still do what I do now. I can say that I have a good balance between teaching and doing music development projects for community, while doing little this and that which could add to my saving. I love my job very much. I didn’t realize that I love it too much that it’s starting to kill me now.

For a particular reason, I said to myself at the beginning of this year that I will take things slowly and focus on important things like educational projects only. But lo and behold! I didn’t see them coming, but one thing leads to another and before I know, I got my hands full, my neck sore, and my brain craving for sleep every single day. And I really haven’t find time to comprehend the situation since all I do every day is teaching up to 8 pm, finishing all paperworks for my projects (which never seem to end!), and now I’ve got a book to translate while squeezing time so I can practice Haydn D-major Concerto (what was I thinking when I said yes to the offer of playing with an orchestra????). There’s simply no time to comprehend. And because I am actually a natural born idler, burning the candle at both ends isn’t really my thing.

First of all, it’s messing my brain circuit. I’ve got maybe 4-5 tracks in my brain right now where all my tasks are put neatly. On normal workload condition, these tasks go on their own time and they get to the finish line on time, safe and sound. At the moment, those tasks are racing with each other and taking other people’s track and bumping and cutting and doing disastrous things. I could be thinking of people to call and places to go to while translating the book, or in the middle of an e-mail, I can suddenly leap to my bookshelf to find concert piece for my student. I’m starting to guess that the piles of paper in my desk waiting to be sorted is the result of my scattered brain.

Second of all, it’s messing my mood, and people who suffer the most from this are usually my poor, lazy, silly students. Music teachers all over the world today must deal with kids who stay too long in school, have too many extracurricular activities and Facebook accounts so they simply have no time to practice. I’ve got these problems too. On shiny days I can get angry at them for not wanting to try to spend 10-15 minutes of their precious 24 hours every day for the sake of their own progress (and my happiness) while still instilling a bit humour in my sarcastic remarks about their being indolent and not-so-intelligent. But on rainy days, it’s hard to maintain a funny side and the more likely occurrence is that I send them home (or more precisely kicking them off my class) and tell them that this is the last time I want to see their lethargic ass in my class again (don’t’ worry, they always come back). I really would do this differently, but it’s really hard especially if, during their stumbling and struggling with notes and rhythms, I keep on saying to myself, “shit, why should I waste time hearing this nonsense? I have 200 pages more to translate!”

Now after doing some contemplation, I think what’s not so good about working too much is that I’m not connected with my core self, with my spirituality, with things I love to do for myself. Lately I always pray in a hurry, I hardly listen to music, I’m always too tired to read even one poem before bed and worse I don’t read any book at all, I don’t write regularly in my journal and my gratitude book, and I don’t even sleep for a long time anymore! For people like me, who finds joy in laying in bed all day while reading poetry, not being connected with those things means not having my soul recharged. And essentially, it’s very simple for me. My contentment doesn’t depend on having a lot of clothes or shoes or bags, I don’t have to recharge my soul in Bali or wherever, all I need is good music, good book and sometimes even only good friends to have good conversation with.

As Schnabel said, the art of life lays in those quiet moments which we, from time to time, must use to breath. It’s just as important as all the notes we play. So the next question is: should I start Dicken’s Pickwick Papers or Byron’s poems?

Brandy, Anyone?

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. (George Bernard Shaw)

I’ve just done a project last month. It was initiated around September last year. A music patron in the capital contacted me and asked if I wanted to organise a recital by a young Polish pianist with extraordinary story who is on his way to fame in Scotland. This patron, coming from a musical background (his mother was a concert pianist), told me that this pianist played amazingly.

Normally with new artists with whom I’m about to collaborate, I did a background checking, lots of googgling and asked for a sound sample. I did everything, but after waiting for some months, this pianist, or to be precise, his manager couldn’t give me any recorded sample. At that time I started to feel funny and annoyed at the same time, especially since all the time I only got in touch with the manager. But then this patron kept singing his praise about the pianist so I finally shrugged off the idea and started working on the project.

To make long story short, I got him 4 concerts in 4 different cities. 3 of them were partly supported by the French cultural centre, whose directors have very good rapport with me. They were all enthusiastic, since the recital would open the year while celebrating the 200 anniversary of birth of Chopin. From then on everything went well. Venues were all available, booked, bla-bla-bla, alles klar. On a certain day in January, I met the pianist and his manager for the first time in Jakarta. I didn’t communicate a lot with the artist because of his bad English and the fact that he smoked a lot and went in and out of practice, so I chatted instead with his manager. We’ve spent several hours together and I still haven’t heard him play.

The next day, we were supposed to organise a private recital and THERE I heard him for the first time. I was abysmally shocked. This pianist, who reportedly played amazingly, was really just an amateur. First of all, he did many strange rhythms which he should never have done as someone who went to conservatory to study music. His technique was virtuostic, that I must admit, but in spite of that, he couldn’t manage to perform any piece without flaws. There were so many mistakes, and what was very annoying was that he didn’t try to even press one single key clearly. There were always some unnecessary strike in nearby keys and that made the whole performance messy. He played a particular waltz which I was teaching to one of my students, and I can proudly say that she played with much more clarity and common sense.

After that private recital I totally lost interest in the whole project and really regretted myself for not doing my homework. It’s true what people said. The things you regret the most are usually the things you didn’t do. I should have insisted on having that sound sample. I should have asked for second opinion.

The most infuriating thing is that I felt guilty and awful for bringing such a stupid musician and making people pay for the crap he made. Of course, I shouldn’t feel this way especially since a lot of people did seriously enjoy his playing (and to talk about beginner’s luck, he sold out 2 recitals and got a packed hall in 1 recital) and even praised him with absurd acclaims. But people who understood good music, and many of them were among my audience in Bandung and Jakarta, were really disappointed and also quite mistified about why I would have presented such unprofessional musician in the first place. All this time I suppose I have somehow grown trust in my audience, in the people I work with, that what I present to public will be the best and nothing but the best. One of CCF Directors, knew that this project wasn’t initiated by my company, warned me kindly that in the future he will only cooperate with my choice of artists. Fair enough. I think I learned a lot by compromising and I knew better next time.

My mentor kept telling me that I shouldn’t feel bad about what’s going on because my role was only as mediator and that in the end, all ethical and moral responsibility should be in the hand of the artists. But to make me remember the lesson, I kept on telling myself that when I first build Classicorp, I had a moral obligation to myself to give nothing but the best, and when you don’t act according to your own principle, it ain’t gonna feel good.

Music for Sale

For the past couple of years there’s been a growing trend in Indonesian music school society to hold concerts in shopping malls. The reason is a cliché: where would be the best place to sell things but in a place full of people? And just like any marketing formula, people working to sell music education also seem to think that the product must be brought to the customer. In some part this makes a damn good sense, especially in the market where more and more competitors emerge. Another thing is, with the raising of middle-class society in Asian markets, including Indonesia, more and more households opt for music education for their children. So music schools must act quickly now by reaching out to its potential customers.

The music school where I work is one of those in business who is quite seized by this trend. When I started working there in 2007, I was asking myself like, “What??? Are they really going to sell performance of children who play 16-bars music to the public? (And often played badly too?)”Astonishingly though, a lot of parents don’t mind at all, and in fact, they are really proud that their children can already “perform” in public at such a tender age. Even more astonishing is that not so many teachers care so much about the content of the performance. Those who support this kind of event usually say that this gives the children an opportunity to build confidence before they could play in a “serious” concert. So it seems that this new marketing gimmick finds favour in pupils and their parents.

But then, on the first place, wasn’t it designed to aim for those people who are out there? This could seem like getting two things for the price of one: The schools are making their customers happy while trying to get new customers. But I don’t think we can measure the success of such program with the same sticks.

First of all, the questions I have in mind vis-à-vis getting new customers: (1) Is it really effective? Nobody hasn’t been able to prove that by doing this, the number of students enrollling increases by so-and-so percent. (2) Can music education (not so much as classical music) be taken as common good just like a piece of clothing or book or donut and thus be sold at public area like that? I think not. Being a still exclusive good (although no longer luxurious), music education isn’t something people impulsively “buy”. The decision in getting your children music education are influenced by so many things, just like when people are buying a car. Any sensible parents would ask themselves and their kids a lot of questions before they decide to go for it. I don’t think anyone who bumps into this kind of concert while shopping for a new pair of jeans will immediately enroll their offsprings to the nearest music institution the following day.

On the other side, when the school authorities say that this kind of event builds confidence in children, I must say that this is one of the biggest crap they could invent. I once prepared my kids for an event at a food court, and true, they played with more confidence that for a while I thought this trick really works. But then I found out that they were at ease because of one reason and one reason only: they think no one is really listening! They thought that people would just stop by for a while and with all the sounds from shops and cafes, no one could ever absorp anything and thus no one would critize nor comment any mistakes they’ve done. But once they’re back in even a small-scoped, closely-observed routines like studio classes, they’re back to having cold feet again. Once in a regular studio class where a lot of parents attended, all my kids played so badly that I had to make each and every one of them played everything again. When I asked one pupil, she said it’s because a lot of parents were there and the rest oft the class promptly shouting their amens. I think studio class is even more effective in building the “right” confidence in young musicians. It’s never easy playing for other people, even more for a lot of people, but when they want to do it they have to have the right confidence by knowing that they have worked hard to prepare themselves as best as they can and not by knowing that they won’t be reprimanded for any flaws in the performance. And sure, a lot of parents, when they enroll their children to music schools, have absolutely no idea what is required in a performance and how it should be done, but isn’t it our job as teachers to teach them that their children is never too young to share what is called a good music? And that they must take it seriously and see to it, because if they don’t, who else would want to do that?

A day after Christmas, the music school where I work gave a concert in one of the shopping center in the city. One of my students was playing Chopin’s waltz and I thought she played beautifully, but then her playing had to compete with all kinds of music from every corner of the plaza and the sound of people chattering that in the end, nothing good was much left. What a sad waste, if not complete. She worked hard for that piece and when she had the chance to share it, no one cared enough to appreciate the genius of Chopin and the process involved in bringing the music out. That night I decided to go my own way and hopefully, in time, some people can prove me wrong or they will finally see reason.

(Imported blog)

Happy New Year!

What's with the change of year that's so special?

I think the fact that new things always bring new hopes is what make new year such a fabulous happening (although no one in my family celebrate that anymore). New year is somehow like a new blank paper we can write on, like a fresh new t-shirt you put on after you take a long bath, like the quiet, clean and peaceful air after a big storm. It's a spirit-and-mind lifter for us by knowing that there'll be good stuffs await us in the upcoming days.

I spent my new year's eve skimming my teenage diaries and found that I always made resolutions for the new year. Some of them were carried out, some became only writings on paper. I didn't do this anymore and instead focusing on being grateful for what God has given me.

I must say that I felt very blessed last year with everything that has happened to me, good or bad. But I also know that I will be even more blessed this year, so when the first day began I didn't thank only for every wish granted, but also for things that are in store for me in 2010. Allan Chalmers said that the "grand essentials of happiness is something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." I know that this year is going to be my year because I have all of these.

Happy New Year, dear friends and readers, may your path be filled with love and that whatever we'll experience during this journey will make us a better person at the end of the year.