The Future...

belongs to the youth. 

I can now say the same for the world of classical music in Indonesia, especially after organising several recitals by young "amateur" musicians. Sure, their talents differ: some have more and some have less, but they all have these things in common: they have professional work ethics, they come on stage well-prepared, they give their best with what they have and because of that they're willing to go the extra mile, and they never take anything for granted. They're doing it for love. It's so rare here, and it's inspiring.   

More and more young Indonesian musicians are now going abroad to study. They're equipped with bigger voice and stronger technique and  better preparation, thanks to their teachers. If they keep up the good work, once they become pros, if they don't  forget who they were when they started, and that they owe it to themselves to always, always give 100%, if they realize that they have responsibilities and act accordingly, I think I can cross my fingers and look forward to a brighter future in my country's classical music scenery. 

Entourage

Some people enjoy a large circle of friends, without any really particular close friends who know them very well. Some people are more at ease with one or two people who know them inside out and more likely to have been and will be friends for life (like my mum, who has only 2 BFFs in her life, and my brother, who wedded his one and only BFF and they now raise four kids together). 

I just read a very touching blogpost by my violinist partner, Arya, who wrote about his best friend. He can be with a lot of people, and is very popular among his peers, but I think he only feels absolutely at home with the particular subject of his post. 

And me? I feel that I'm getting more and more reclusive as I age (now I think of myself like a piece of furniture). I'm basically shy and insecure and although I learn to be my own person among strangers and feel comfortable, in the long run I tend to stick to the same, very few friends who know me a lot, if not completely. Some of the people have even left the company, either intentionally nor unintentionally, leaving the circle even smaller. I used to fret, but the older I get, the more capable I am now of letting go. In some cases, it's just as natural as birth and death. People change, and they don't find you compatible anymore, or you change, and you find it harder and harder to seek common ground. 

So here's what I know for sure, from friends who come and go, and stay. 

www.piccsy.com

The Two Sides of Commitment

Photo (C) Aria Medina

I'm not married yet, but I'm surrounded by married men and women, and I learned a lot from those marriages. Some of them are happy ones, some not so much. I know that it takes more than love to make a marriage work. In fact, I don't think love is needed to make a marriage. This needs more commitment, above all things. Commitment makes you able to compromise, willing to understand, ready to forgive. 

Any relationship, be it personal or professional, needs commitment to make it last.  

So I know that commitment is important. It's basically what makes the world goes round. We won't have schools if we don't have teachers who are committed to their work. There will be no hospitals if doctors won't commit their lives to the lives of other people, often times forgetting their own lives. And there will be no countries if some people are not committed to govern other people and try to establish some order in the society. 

The thing is, once you're committed to commitment, it's easy for you to forget why you're doing it in the first place. Commitment becomes an obligation, but the kind that does not fulfill and never succeeds in making us truly happy. Life goes on, but it won't be worth living. 

People say yes a lot to a lot of things. Many times they know that commitment comes with it, and they do it. But along the way they forget that love has to be there, too.  

The Next Big Thing

This has to happen next in Bandung: a concert hall. 

I've been thinking a lot during this sabbatical year, and I've come up with this conclusion: Bandung, or any city in the world, cannot expect to move forward in classical music unless the city has its own "house" for it. It's where classical musicians dwell, eat, read, breathe and live music. The logic is simple. Any living thing, be it human or animal or something not so organic like classical music, needs a proper home so it can grow and be nurtured and mature well. 

So far, what we've got is an auditorium belonging to the French Cultural Centre (CCF), situated in an area with horrible traffic and impossible parking. Despite its popularity, it cannot prevent concerts from losing spectators. People just gave up coming. Moreover, classical music isn't the priority here. We share with other forms of performing arts, both local as well as international. Earlier the directors had enough authority to decide who can play, but since the CCF turned into the centralized Institute Francais, which means that all decisions regarding artists and programmes come from Jakarta, local artists (i.e. classical musicians) have smaller chance of being heard.

I also think that a concert hall will decrease our need for sponsorship. It can self-sustain by opening its doors to people/organisations who want to rent it, and then the money will be used to further develop classical music. The business will finance the idealism. And it has to. It has to give back to the community which support it. After six years in this business, I've found out that Bandung has almost zero chance of getting sponsorship. Not just from Jakarta, where big companies reside, simply because they don't consider the city "important" enough to give the exposure they need, but also from the city itself, simply because companies here don't care enough. But the market is there, and the customers are loyal. It would be such a shame if we couldn't do something about it. And since I'm getting tired and depressed every time I had to conjure a tour for every single international artists who'd come just so Bandung can be included in the tour by using sponsorship from other cities, I strongly believe we must try to be independent, and not counting so much on help from other sources.

I've quite tried a lot for the past 6 years. Concerts, recitals, master classes, workshops, camps: been there, done that. All I've got are diminishing audience, sponsorship and returns. I can continue doing this, but doing the same thing again and again while expecting different result is crazy. It's time to change strategy. It's time to think bigger and come up with the one right solution that will bring classical music to another level.