EXCITED: Jogja Debut TODAY - Wonderful Hall

Tonight, Monday, August 10th, 2009, at 7.30 PM, we will be making our Jogja Debut at the newly inaugurated Jogja Conservatory (ISI) Hall. Great hall, wonderful building, with good acoustics, and good piano!!

We had a great rehearsal yesterday afternon. I'll be rehearsing a bit more this morning, just for my own personal practice (fingers won't just run by itself) and then get some rest. Kathryn and Nathan will post more blogs and pictures from yesterday's rehearsal.

Additionally, Kathryn and Nathan visited Prambanan Temple (where they attended Ramayana Traditional Dance performance) and also the famed Borobudur Temple - one of the 7 (or 8)wonders of the world.

We'll keep you posted. Wish us luck today... we're having positive vibes about this and feel very much rested, relaxed, and just inspired. Jogja is such a beautiful, and serene (that's the word.... serene) place for artistic endeavors, practicing, music making, etc.

Tomorrow we will have a separate piano and voice masterclass for the students of Jogjakarta Conservatory ... at 9 AM.

METRO-TV: Morning Talk Show Interview

Dear all:
Since I don't have all the pictures (Kathryn and Nathan are the masters of that), I will put a simpler text version.

This is a late posting of a blog - for last Friday, August 7th, 2009.

On Friday morning, I was picked up at the hotel in Jakarta at 5 AM (just like Ananda's Glass Conservatory Song... " 5 AM.....") by a METRO-TV staff to come and join them for their 7 AM English Language News broadcast. The trip lasted only for 15 minutes because it's early and there was hardly any cars on the street. Sigh, if only Jakarta is like that all the time.

I arrived there, waited at their great green room for 1.5 hours and had some crackers and tea. I met another person who was going to be interviewed in the next morning talk show (in Chinese....). He's a Thai artist / athlete and he was nice. Didn't get to know him further.

Then onwards to the interview. It was fun, in their nice, clean, neat studio. It was about 10 minutes or so (and I had to get up at 5 AM for that, ON THE DAY of the concert debut).
The interview ranged from my musical backgrounds, musical influences, career,
and also the Swara Sonora Trio's beginnings, and also our involvement with UNICEF
Immunization Fund-Raising program.

The interviewer was fun, and warm, and he had a very nice and clean British accent
(he's Indonesian). Additionally, I also mentioned how Swara Sonora Trio met, as a team teaching OMA (Opening Minds through the Arts - http://www.omaprogramaz.org) and also that we loved teaching and integrating music-arts into our activities and to other interdisciplinary program.

I will post this interview clip (after I get a DVD copy from the TV station) on youtube or
facebook. Thank you very much METRO-TV!! You've done great things for the community
throughout SouthEast Asia, in Indonesia, through your great and wide-ranging, and varied programming !

Successful Debut Concert!

We are happy to report that our debut concert on Friday night was a tremendous success! We had a great turnout and many of our new Indonesian friends came out to see and support us.

Members of the diplomatic community were present, and most importantly, Angela Kearney (above photo), the UNICEF Country Office Representative, gave a wonderful opening speech and showed full support towards our cause.

We came early to warm up at the hall, tried on our beautiful matching blue batik outfits (as you can see on the pics), and then had a snack. Our page turner was wonderful, the UNICEF staff was on hand to set up their booth, and the entire ERASMUS HUIS staff were very supportive.




We were excited to announce that we raised $1,500 (plus all of future proceeds from our concerts here in Indonesia, and the money contributed from our Indonesian 100 Friends!) Check out the cool check banner that Kathryn designed!

We had a fantastic turnout. The audience consisted of our masterclass students, Singaporean and Malaysian diplomatic representatives, music teachers and leading musical figures in Jakarta, and even some people as far away as from Argentina.



We could not celebrate long because we had to get back to the hotel to rest and pack for our 4 AM wake up call. We had to be at the airport for our 6 AM flight to Jogjakarta.

More stories from our first two days in Jogjakarta will follow! Stay tuned to our blog, and keep the comments coming!

Day 7 and 8, or the day before and The Big Day

Yesterday we mostly relaxed so that we would be in good shape for our Asian Debut concert tonight. We had a great run-through rehearsal in Ibu Insia's studio at Yayasan Musik Internasional. We are ready!

Then we had a wonderful dinner with Ibu Erni and Ibu Linda, who have been taking wonderful care of us here in Jakarta. We dined at Kembang Goela, an elegant restaurant in Central Jakarta.


It was our first time in the busy, modern center of the city, and we marveled at all the brightly-lit skyscrapers as we cruised (okay, rather crawled) through Jakarta traffic on our way there and back.

This morning Aryo was on Indonesian TV! He was interviewed by Metro TV's "Indonesia This Morning" show and got to talk about our Peace Tour, our collaboration with UNICEF, and the concert details for tonight. Nathan and I were a little jealous that we weren't invited, but we weren't jealous of Aryo's 5:00 a.m. pickup for the long ride across Jakarta before the 7:00 a.m. live broadcast. I woke up just in time to catch the end of Aryo's interview, and he did a great job!

We're about to leave for Erasmus Huis to warm up and get ready in their beautiful facilities. If you're in Jakarta, join us at 7:30 p.m. for what is going to be an exciting and enjoyable program!

Contest rules update

Hey friends - thanks for all your wonderful comments on our blog. The blog comment contest is off with a bang!

Here are a couple updates to the contest rules:

1. Members of the Swara Sonora Trio are not eligible to win, though they may make comments on the blog (nice try, Nate!).

2. If the winner selected on August 22 resides in Indonesia, we will send said winner a fabulous American prize, as that may be more exciting than a fabulous Indonesian prize.

:)

Keep the comments coming! Remember, the more times you comment, the greater your chances of winning...

Day 6, or Journey to the 'Burbs

Yesterday we traveled to the edge of Jakarta, to Universitas Pelita Harapan in Karawaci to give a master class there. Our hosts, Ibu Nia and Ibu Reisa, were gracious, and the students were talented and receptive. We wished we could have stayed longer in Karawaci, which is a very beautiful area with lots of restaurants and shops.

The UPH campus is modern and very beautiful. We arrived early, so we ate Singapore-style lunch in the food court, which was open and looked out onto the open-air basketball court. School hasn't started yet at UPH so campus was quiet. We were grateful that so many music students came to school during the final days of their vacation to attend and perform for our master class.

We got lucky with traffic yesterday, too. It was supposed to take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours to get to Karawaci, and we made it in about an hour each way. We did have to drive home through Jakarta's rush-hour traffic, which looks kind of pretty after dark.

Today we have a busy afternoon of rehearsing and then dinner with our generous sponsors at Telkom. Then tomorrow is the big day - our Asian debut concert at Erasmus Huis!

More Indonesian Friends!

With the help of Aryo's mother Erni we've been running a 100 Indonesian Friends campaign parallel to our 100 Friends Campaign back home - the goal is to have 100 friends in Indonesia give 100,000 Rp. each ($10) to support the UNICEF Indonesia Country Office.

Although I won't be able to edit the list on our website until I get back to my computer in Tucson, we've doubled our number of Indonesian Friends since arriving in Jakarta a week ago. We now have 20 Indonesian Friends, and $645 raised. Here are the additions to our list of 100 Indonesian Friends:

Siswo Utomo
Audrey Siswo Utomo
Stenike Siswo Utomo
Aziza Nuraini
Prabowo Trisno Edhie
Narendra Wiku Respati
Rekian Ratri Amara Viti
Linda Yulietta
Ratna Sylvia
Kresna Partogi Hutabarat

Thanks to all! Anyone else in Indonesia interested in helping out can contact Ms. Erni Kolopaking at ekolopaking@yahoo.com.

And our 100 Friends Campaign in the US is still active - you can donate online with your credit card through the 100 Friends page.