Regret

3 years ago, on Valentine's Day, a guy asked me to step out of my dinner table to dance with him. We were in the middle of group meal and I haven't been asked for a dance for quite some time, and I suddenly felt very scared. Moreover, that night I didn't feel particularly confident so in the end I just froze in my chair, gave him a smile but we never had that dance. 

I should have had that dance. Not only because I need to dance again, but also because the guy who asked me was really, really nice and super decent. He also happened to have a pair of lovely blue eyes and a smile that could melt all the ice in North Pole. 

Now I'm haunted. What and if are two simple words, but put together, the effect can be devastating. It's not just one night I lay awake in bed thinking to myself, "what if we...", and I know it's too much to hope that something might happen because something might eventually not happen, but I never know. And I will never know because I didn't have that dance. 

Regrets, regrets. I am happy to say that up to these days, I can sing "My Way" and really said the lines about it: I've had a few. But among them, this is one of it. And I should've known better. It's always the thing you did not do that you regret the most. Or did not say. And I'm just saying, sometimes it's good to say yes without thinking too much. Joyce loved it because it's the most positive word ever in the whole vocabulary of mankind, and a lot of time, you're making someone happy when you say it. A lot of times, saying yes means getting something done. And that is something you won't regret.    

Letter from Gidon Kremer

...about why he withdrew from Verbier Festival. (If you don't know Kremer or Verbier Festival, ask Google.) I sadly must agree with him, that there are so many hype things going on in the "professional" music world today, even in Indonesia, where the so-called professionals have really a lot to question themselves and their work ethics. In fact, in the past few years, I tremendously enjoyed working with local amateurs on stage. These are people, borrowing Kremer's words, "who use the given opportunity to share and SERVE music by simply showing up and “enjoying themselves”. And I am sincerely thankful to them because they have really made my work in promoting classical music in the community so much easier and more fun.

Dear Martin,

Today, unfortunately I have some upsetting news for you. After many weeks of questioning myself, and a barrage of conflicting thoughts, I have finally decided to withdraw my participation in this year’s Verbier festival.

While I do not want to hurt you, I can only imagine how disappointed you will be. Please believe me, when I say that I really do not have any other choice.

We all get older, this is a fact we can’t deny this and this somehow demands more responsibility towards our actions. It concerns as well the important question of where and why we say “yes” or “no”.

It is wonderful, that Verbier provides so many opportunities for young musicians to share the music. I especially value the enthusiastic work of the Festival orchestra. I am also aware of how important it is for you, to celebrate all your friends birthdays and anniversaries. And among these highly valued performers are also some of my own very dear friends.

Nevertheless the question to myself remains: what am I personally doing on this summit of “names” and both old and new celebrities?

Having all my life served music and composers, a repertoire which is established as “classic” and one which, for decades I had to fight for to be heard, I now feel that I need to make a choice. I simply do not want any more to be part of “parties for the sake of parties”. To be one of a group of so many splendid artists is not something that I want to justify or confirm.

Some decades ago an American newspaper wrote a contradicting but ironic punch-line about me: “he is so much out, that he is in”. Time has come for me to feel, that I want to be “in” in everything I am doing. It is not easy for me to explain why, but I do feel that in Verbier, I am an “outsider”.

You would wonder: “Gidon! How can you say such a thing, being surrounded by so many friends, who respect you, who love to play with you, who look up to you? Aren’t you aware, that I myself have admired you for years?”.

Dear Martin! Please do not draw any wrong conclusions.

I am not putting up barricades because of any ambitions or desire to look at everything as a snob, as many critics do! – With their prejudice, so to say- “from above”. – No way.

I simply do not want to breath the air, which is filled by sensationalism and distorted values. Lets’ admit – all of us have something to do with the poisonous development of our music world, in which “stars” count more than creativity, ratings more than genuine talent, numbers more than…. sounds.

This summer I have decided, after 30 years of full commitment to conclude my activity for the Lockenhaus festival. For three decades, I served the cause and can only be grateful for having had so many friends who also follow that spirit. Music itself was and remained the core of this festival, which can be proud to have given an opportunity to thousands of musical scores to have been performed. It was and remains an oasis of intimacy, in size and in orientation.

Now, finding myself rather exhausted through my numerous tours, new projects and recording sessions, I feel even more, that I should do only the things which I believe myself are still somewhat necessary. And here it is: I simply do not have enough energy to support gatherings and collaborations on highly exposed stages with “rising” or approved stars of today’s music business for the sake of ovations and name-dropping.

Yes, I know, I should be professional. Most of my life I tried to stick to my word (and I am aware that promised you that I’d come) but a time has now come in which the overall devaluation of the word "interpreter” has resulted in a misguided fixation with glamour and sex appeal.

This is not anymore “my” time. I leave it to those who believe in it, be it the audiences or the new bread of performers, who have overwhelming capacities to please crowds, but who are often themselves quite EMPTY and artistically lost, chasing a hunger for recognition over ability.

Let it be like this.

Not being a hypocrite, I simply need to gain some distance and rest from all those ”fireworks”. This is the only reason that I have made this decision to step out, since I do not want this to add to the overall confusion, which has established itself within the music market in recent years.

I wish you a productive summer full of joyful meetings and “great performances” which every evening, you will announce at the usual gatherings, in circles of artists, hosts and friends.

I hope that you not only sell plenty of tickets, but as well promote the image of the festival itself, which can be honored to have such a great music lover and salesman as it’s “artistic director”.

I wish as well some day, that you find some distance from all those musicians, who use the given opportunity to share and SERVE music by simply showing up and “enjoying themselves”.

Many festivals these days unfortunately allow mixing self-enchantment with entertainment – (be it crossover or “events”) and they succeed to remain a magnet for all those, who want to be seen or hailed.

Yes I am a bit ironic and with a bitter feeling in saying these words;
 REAL artists like those that we still remember, haven’t vanished completely. But the “greenery” of Verbier rather contributes to forgetting them and hails mystifications and substitutes of those, who truly served ART. Opposing such a tendency, I simply want to find peace with myself. Lately being warn out by so many dissatisfying partnerships, I simply need a rest. I do hope this will be the best remedy for the hype that surrounds many of us.
 
.....


To view complete letter, visit:
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/07/gidon-kremer-why-i-quit-the-celebrity-ratrace.html.

Then God Made Sundays...

Another event checked last night. I was organising the second "Music Day", a community concert for young local musicians and for the past week the life on stage of 80+ young musicians were in my hands. On Friday night, just before bed, I had anticipated Saturday with a certain amount of apprehension. Taking care that many people is already something, yet my stupid brain was able to convince me that I need to play as well in that concert because my students will be there and I would like them to set them an example. So, as always, I bit more than I can chew. 

And then I looked at my schedule for the next few months and realized that I will have to start making daily to-do-list so I will have everything ready on time. 

I can't seem stop nor slow down. 

At the end of the camp (i.e. July) I said to myself that the next season would be sabbatical and I will do only one event a month. But if you do everything yourself, one event is still a bit too much, considering that in between them you still have to teach and practice and read and translate books and write blogs and go to the bank and go to the post office to post letters for your niece who happens to love sending and getting letters and designing publication materials then post them to Facebook...so, okay, you got the idea, right? It never ends. There's always something to do. 

So, back to Saturday night, I was in bed at midnight with a pair of sore feet but strangely, I felt very content. I think by the time I finished my performance with my trio and closed the concert, I knew that I could handle that much. For future reference, I have that much capacity to prepare my kids for concert, practise some piece myself, and organise the concert itself. And with that I know that my life for the next few months will be hectic, but it won't be catastrophic.With a good time management it won't have to be chaotic. 

The good thing is, God made Sundays for me. In fact, I think, Sundays are made for everybody. It's the time where you can lay around in bed not doing anything, or better yet, sleeping, or scrapbooking, or blogging, like I do. One thing I know for sure: never let anything take your Sunday away from you. As Albert Schweizer said, "if your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan."

Is it really that HARD?

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skilful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.” - William A. Foster

Maybe, it is that hard. According to the quote above, you need:

1. High intention

2. Sincere effort

3. Intelligent direction

4. Skilful execution

and the most difficult of all: wisdom. You need it to produce quality. You have to be wise to make a choice out of many alternatives. But what I don't understand is, sometimes there are not so many alternatives, there are, in fact, only two. Are you going to do things badly, or well? Piece of cake. 

I went to a concert last night. A well-known string quartet from France were invited to perform in Bandung's most popular cultural centre, and it was a free-entrance show, something I've never done with professional musicians since I started my career in concert organising. I came home pissed, because of how everything was executed. 

First of all, the concert was late. The organiser seemed to wait for more people before they let us in, then there were a little introduction about the artists and the whole project. It was a little dry. By the end of this opening they forgot to tell people to turn off their cellphones nor store their camera, and as it turned out, flash lights were everywhere during the concert. Very annoying. Some guys with tele lenses (suspect: journalists) flick their camera again and again and were walking around inside the auditorium to get a good angle. 

Second of all, we as audience were left in the dark when we found that there was nothing about the night's program nor the artists. The concert manager told us we would listen to Schubert, Debussy and Smetana, but he didn't even mention the details. When the quartet played the Debussy, my friend asked me whether it was really Debussy because the music did start sounding like Debussy, but in the middle it started to sound very Czech-ish.  

Third of all, the audience, who apparently were classical concert rookies, kept on clapping after movements. I started to fidget in my seat. Until the first-half, no one from the organiser was saying anything about it. Then during intermission I approached one of the centre staff and asked her if she could tell the audience that the normal arrangement for classical music concert is to clap after all the movements are done. It's a part of educating the society, I think, and if they want to do it for the next few years, they should care about such things. But no one came to announce anything after the break (not even to issue a warning to people with flashes), and then someone told us to clap so the artists would go back to the stage. So they came back, but alas! Poor first violinist, he was in the middle of a meal when he arrived on stage because his cheek was bulging with what seems to be food. Not cool!

As far as the quartet themselves, the only thing I can say is that some groups have name and fame which precede their quality. It's just too bad. I was anticipating this concert with all my heart, I really, really miss a fabulous concert, and this group has quite something in Europe (they won prizes, for God sake!), and they have existed for quite some time, but they all played like a bunch of talented, but lazy school kids. It didn't touch any corner of my soul.

Overall, it was a good waste of a what should be a good project. There's was no enthusiasm in the room last night, and as organiser, I know that a huge responsibility of the job to inject energy to a show. Because I feel it myself. Whenever I'm thrilled about a concert, my artists always reciprocate the same amount of energy back and they are able to project the same thing to the audience to ensure a success. In contrary, when I'm not happy about something, when I'm distracted or when I think the artists suck, usually I'll have an awful evening. But back to quality, I just can't understand why some people simply don't want to make an effort to achieve a conducive situation where everyone can be happy and can get the best out of it. Printing a programme wouldn't cost so much, and it certainly would teach something to the audience. They'll have better things to do than clicking their Goddamn camera all night long. And it certainly didn't take an hour to teach the audience to hold their hands until a piece is finished thoroughly. It's called classical concert education and if you really care about what you do and whom you're serving, you should take time to do this. And never assume that people come with this kind of knowledge. It's not Europe, and classical music is not at home here. The frustrating thing for me is that none of these things are difficult, but you have to want to do it. That's what Foster called as high intention. 

But in the end I must agree with Aristotle when he said that "quality is not an act, it's a habit." I happen to know that the people who organise the concert last night were not used to it. Stupid of me to expect them to perform better, when mediocre is their middle name. After all, if you ask a fish to climb a tree, people will tell you that you're the monkey. 

Inspiring!

www.templegrandin.com

This is an amazing portrayal of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who became professor at Colorado State University. You can also check her website above which explains a lot about autism. There are a lot of inspiring lines and there is also a lyric from "You'll Never Walk Alone" (which Claire Danes sung it so autistically that I can hardly call it a song), and one of my favorite is "different, but not less". Yes, we all are, even when we have things like autism or asperger.

Claire Danes, by the by, did a marvellous job. I think she deserved a nomination for this one!