Culture mix: The Yuganada Gamelan Ensemble performs during the Bach in Bali music festival.

The Bach in Bali music festival aims to start something bigger than just a regular classical music event.

The melody was mischievously taunting before it came to an abrupt halt. As the performers plucked the strings of their violins, the image of naughty long-tailed macaques tiptoeing near unsuspecting tourists in Ubud’s Monkey Forest reserve formed in the audience’s mind. 

The melodic “break” was brief and the hall was again filled with the alluring composition, with an unmistakable hint of Balinese traditional tones.

The music and the vision of playful monkeys it evoked succeeded in eliciting smiles and grins on the faces of the audience that filled the auditorium of Padma Resort Legian on that Sunday night.

Titled “Ubud Monkeys”, the piece is part of Bali Miniatures, a musical composition created by Indonesian composer Marisa Sharon Hartanto.

Educated in London’s Royal Holloway University, Sharon is a conductor, pianist and Sundanese and Balinese gamelan player. The winner of the Baroque Remixed Project competition, Sharon composed the six-part Bali Miniatures as a commissioned work for Quatuor Bozzini. The composition premiered in August 2018 at Teater Salihara in Jakarta.

On that Sunday night, “Ubud Monkeys” and “Gamelan”, the second part of Bali Miniatures, was performed by the Bali-based Wage String Quartet during Bachanalia, the second concert of the inaugural Bach in Bali chamber music festival.

The festival, which lasted from May 1 to 5, was a collaborative project between the Bandung Philharmonic and Project Artitude, a social enterprise founded to extend the joy of music to a bigger, diverse audience in Asia.

Chemistry: A jam session during the Bach in Bali music festival.

Bachanalia also featured performances by the Bandung-based Reka String Quartet and the Bangkok-based Chen String Quartet, as well as a collaborative work between the Bali-based Yuganada Gamelan Ensemble with viola player Lionel Tan and sound sculptor Mervin Wong.

To a large extent, Bachanalia is a platform to showcase the achievements of the young musicians, who in the previous four days had honed their skills in the festival’s masterclass seminars.

The festival provided these young musicians with scholarships to attend and participate in the event. The lecturers were established international classical musicians, including Nicole Jeong, Michael Hall, Leslie Tan and Hazim Suhadi.

All these mentors performed in Tri Hita Karana, the festival’s first concert featuring the works of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

“I believe that in these masterclass sessions, the mentorship we as young musicians received was the most important and valuable aspect of this festival,” Bali-born and Bandung-educated violinist Putu Sandra Devindriati Kusuma said.

Sandra is cofounder of the Bandung Philharmonic. In late 2018 she relocated to Bali and founded the Wage String Quartet, a group of eight passionate classical music performers.

The masterclass sessions, she acknowledged, were truly an eye-opening experience for the invited young musicians.

“We were taught by different coaches in each session and they generously shared their perspectives as well as experiences. We learned not only the technical skills – how to play together and to listen to each other – but also how to understand and interpret the musical composition that we would perform,” she said.

All together: Young classical musicians showcase their skills during the Bach in Bali music festival.

“For instance, Bali Miniatures was a very challenging composition with alternating use of pizzicato [plucking] and arco [bowing] techniques. Our coaches guided us through the intricacy of each technique,”

The festival had even flown in a luthier to teach the young musicians how to take care of their instruments.

“Another important aspect, the interactions and conversations during the masterclass sessions and concerts have endowed us with a huge positive energy to popularize classical music here in Bali,” Sandra said.

The fact that the participating young musicians saw the Bach in Bali festival as a valuable educational experience put a big smile on the faces of two masterminds of the festival; Airin Efferin of the Bandung Philharmonic and Leslie Tan of Project Artitude.

An effervescent lady who put her musical career in a hiatus to lead the Bandung Philharmonic, Airin cited El Sistema, a program founded in 1970s Venezuela in which musicians and educators taught classical music to street children, as the inspiration for the Bandung Philharmonic’s social outreach program as well as for the establishment of the Bach in Bali festival.

“The worst thing about poverty is that you don’t have any identity, no voice. Through classical music we hope to give the voice and the beauty of music to those unfortunate children,” she said.

Meanwhile, Leslie, who assisted the Bandung Philharmonic in launching its classical music program targeting poor students and children in a refugee camp in West Java, envisioned the Bach in Bali festival as the continuation and expansion of that program.

He expects it to grow into a major platform through which established international musicians share their knowledge, skills, and passion with children and youngsters from Bali and other regions in Asia.

“We want to start a movement, not a festival,” Leslie said.

Follow my lead: Young musicians participate in a coaching clinic led by Leslie Tan of Project Artitude, a social enterprise founded to extend the joy of music to a bigger, diverse audience in Asia.

— Photos by JP/Wayan Martino