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.
