Ananda Sukarlan: A modest maestro

JP/Dina IndrasafitriAnanda Sukarlan has done hundreds of concerts over the years.

He is recognized worldwide as a piano talent and has composed a number of operas and other works, including a hymn for the Olympics that was broadcast throughout Asia.

Ananda is also someone who wears an eye-catching t-shirt with his name on it, who is friendly to those he is meeting for the first time and who thinks it’s funny that artists tend to make themselves look strange for the sake of strangeness.

“People here like strange things. If you do something strange, then it is art here. But in fact it’s very easy to make strange things…” he said with his signature good-natured, rather sheepish grin.

His tone of voice is seldom haughty, and most of the time it seems like he is trying to please the person he is talking to.

The image of the eccentric artist who obtains pride from people failing to understand his art is not Ananda. To him, the mistake lies in the hands of the artist, not the audience, should the latter fail to comprehend the former’s work.

“I can say about music that music is communication. If I say something and that another person doesn’t understand, then it’s my fault. If we speak in a different language then there has to be a common language, and music is the common language,” he said.

Another thing that disturbs Ananda about people’s perceptions of art is that it is something one can do without learning “It takes years to learn and the process never stops,” he said.

Ananda’s learning experience has been exceptional to say the least. His early fascination with classical music came when he was still a pre-teen and there was an old, almost abandoned piano at his parents’ house.

“My sister studied music seriously in a course. I learned partly from her,” he recalled.

His interest and diligence grew over the years. Eventually, he found that to study classical music properly one has to go overseas, but his family — with seven children, including himself — lacked the money and he had to find a scholarship on his own.

Ananda’s studying ended with glorious flair. He graduated summa cum laude from the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag.

But he did have to endure financial constraints during his student days. One of his most memorable experiences was hiding in the toilet of a train from Amsterdam to Bordeaux to take part in a piano competition to avoid paying the fare.

He has learned the hard way indeed and perhaps that is partly what has shaped him into the modest man he is now, despite all his achievements.

“I’m just doing my job and nothing else. People should do their job well and that means achievement, that’s all. I’m not the kind of person who wants to make the world better. I think to make the world better is to make yourself better,” Ananda said.

One might say that nowadays he is reaping what he has worked so hard for. Ananda now lives in what he labels a “beautiful” valley near the beach in Spain with his wife and 12-year-old daughter. When he is not performing, he usually begins composing at midnight and rests at around 5 a.m.

The 43-year-old is currently preparing for an opera titled Laki-laki Sejati (The Real Man) based on a short story by one of his favorite writers, Putu Wijaya. The opera is set to be rather comic, with an all-female cast discussing what makes a real man.

During the CIMB Niaga Opera Gala 2011 last week, Ananda performed one of his newest pieces, “Fons Juventatis” or “The Fountain of Youth”, for the first time. Commissioned by CIMB for the event, the piece was a jovial one composed in honor of his friend Erza S.T, the founder of the Indonesian Opera Society and organizer of the event.

Ananda also has a blog that exudes youthfulness, friendliness and perhaps a bit of Star Trek geekiness. One of its entries includes a question-and-answer session, with questions sent by Kompas readers, some of whom are still in their teens.

His compassion for youth coupled with the hardships he endured during his student days inspired him to co-found the Indonesian Classical Music Foundation (Yayasan Musik Sastra Indonesia) along with choreographer Chendra Panatan, businessman Dedi Panigoro and founder of the Femina group of magazines Pia Alisjahbana

The group aims to help young people who are interested in classical music and intend to pursue that interest in the future but who lack the money to help realize their dreams.

Indeed, a peaceful life, a successful career and even helping others might translate into the ultimate comfort zone, but he is in fact taking steps to leave some of his routines behind after several discoveries he has made about himself.

For one, he wants to shed his identity as a performer and work almost exclusively as a composer, but for the time being it is “impossible” because people still want him to perform, he said.

Another discovery may shock many who are mesmerized by his piano skills.

“I realized that the piano is not my favorite instrument when I was in my thirties. My favorite instrument is the human voice. It’s very expressive, very versatile, very personal. If you play two pianos from the same producer, they sound practically the same but you can’t get two people singing exactly the same,” he said.

And so Ananda’s current dream is to compose operas and only operas.

He has written a few aside from the in-progress Laki-laki Sejati, such as the political piece Mengapa Kau Culik Anak Kami? (Why Did You Kidnap Our Son?) based on a script by author Seno Gumira Ajidarma and Pro Patria, adapted from the novel Kalah dan Menang by Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana.

Ananda said he is not afraid to make changes that are in accordance with his dream and boldly go where he has never gone before.

“I have changed all my life. I realize that I can do the things I thought impossible before,” he said.