SOMTOW: News

The Past is Another Country Department

Someone emailed me this article from 26 years ago ... half my life ... Washington, DC ...

MCLEAN ORCHESTRA TACKLES SUCHARITKUL'S UNIVERSE

by Claudia Moore

Somtow Sucharitkul is one of the most astonishing, controversial, and colorful artists to come to the United States out of Southeast Asia. He is an avant-garde composer whose most recent major work, Gongula 3, was premiered at Bangkok's Asian Composer's Expo '78 and was called "brilliant" and "stunning" by International Newsweekly Asia Week. A month before the premiere, however, the orchestra went on strike ...

"My piece used traditional Thai instruments and Western instruments in new combinations, new sonorities," Sucharitkul said. "The orchestra decided that I had polluted the Sacredness of the ancient instruments. It took a lot of persuasion to get them to play it... but this didn't seem to bother the critics." The day before the the concert, however, which was at Thailand's National Theater, someone had hidden the piano, and Sucharitkul had to have a new one moved in.

Somtow Sucharitkul is only 27 years old, but his music has been performed in England, Germany, Holland, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, and other countries, and has been televised and broadcast on four continents. Japan's prestigious NHK TV made a documentary about him as he toured Southeast Asia and showed it on prime time. UNESCO has designated him its official Asian music expert, and he was only 19 when he conducted his first orchestra on Dutch National TV. His works include A CATCH OF WATERS for six chamber orchestras surrounding the audience, GONGULA 3 for Thai and Western Instruments, and a new piano piece, LIGHT ON THE SOUND, in which the pianist is required to sing into the piano as well as perform astounding tricks of virtuosity. This last piece will be premiered later this year in four cities by pianist Violet Lam: in Hong Kong, Milan, Rome and Cologne.

The "Sucharitkul Sound", critics say, is a new one, different from the harshness of much modern music. He divides his orchestras into small groups and piles layer after layer on top of each other, tinkling, ringing, energetic sonorities. Often he breaks completely away from the severe restrictions of modern music, introducing almost classical melodic lines that hover plaintively over the atonal textures... sometimes he'll slip into a baroque pavane or a passage of tinkling Southeast Asian music, as though thumbing his nose at the strict seriousness of academic music. "My favorite trick", he says, "is to have it look very stark on paper and then to have it sound very rich ravishing and exotic." Pianist Violet Lam said of his recent piece: "When I saw the score I knew I was going to have to perform acrobatics at the piano. I knew it would be very, very difficult. But only when I started to play did I discover that it was also very, very beautiful."

The McLean Chamber Orchestra, winner of last year's ASCAP Award for adventurous programming, is premiering Somtow Sucharitkul's brand new work, STAR MAKER: IN AN ANTHOLOGY OF UNIVERSES, on June 7th. Even for an orchestra whose dynamic conductor, Dingwall Fleary, has established a name for himself in bringing new works to the concert platform, this work should be quite a challenge. "I admire Dingwall very much," Sucharitkul says. "He didn't flinch at all when I asked him for four toy pianos..."

STAR MAKER is a piece that just grew and grew, Sucharitkul told us. Its five movements are musical depictions of five different theories of the universe, different cosmologies from Plato to Einstein. It's a big piece, despite its brevity. "The first movement is a musical depiction of the theory of the Big Bang... it's obviously a very noisy movement. It goes further, though --- it describes an oscillating universe in which everything finally returns to its source. I did this by making not only the movement, but also every individual musical part a palindrome. It's the most mathematically exact movement, the most academically correct. The platonic universe of the second movement has the strings continually straining for Ideal Beauty, which is represented by a G major chord that is continuously sustained throughout the movement. It also has a part for a shakuhachi or Japanese flute. The third movement---with the toy pianos---is the Mechanistic Universe, which to me is an image of God as a cosmic kid playing with a cosmic Lego set. The fourth---Cosmic Dance---is a pavane. The last movement, Inferno-Purgatorio-Paradiso, is sort of a Reader's Digest condensed version of Dante's Divine Comedy. During the piece, a children's chorus screams, whispers, mutters and moans---but never sings.

"Just as the opening is very, very atonal, so the ending of STAR MAKER is very, very C major indeed..."

When we asked him why, he responded, "Why not? I don't see why I shouldn't do this. In composing school in Europe, the ultimate sin is to have a major chord, or even an octave. But this refinement of post-serialism is the result of centuries of development in the European-American mainstream. I didn't come from that mainstream, and I have to write from my own cultural ambiguity, to forge my own musical language out to the ransackings of whatever musical cultures I encounter."

Sucharitkul writes science fiction in his spare time. He started doing this because one day he found he had a writing block while trying to compose. But within a few months he had taken the publishing scene by storm, too, selling 15 short stories and a novel in the first eighteen months of his second career. His first novel is coming out from Pocket/Simon and Schuster later this year, and he is a frequent cover name in magazines such as Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine. He was a little shy in talking about his sudden appearance in this totally unrelated field, but we got him to admit that he had been nominated for a number of awards in the science fiction field and that the Philadelphia Inquirer, talking about his science fiction, praised him for his "wild imagination and colorful command of language" and called one of his stories "gasp-provoking"!

A strange, manysided artist. Five years ago the Bangkok Post described him as "the most accomplished example of an extremely rare breed...an unusually original composer." But last year a Ford Foundation representative said, much more simply, "He is a genius."

from the Taipei Times

AP , BANGKOK
Monday, Feb 06, 2006,Page 4
More than 120 years after his death, German composer Richard Wagner makes his operatic debut in Southeast Asia with a performance of Das Rheingold that portrays a divine Eastern kingdom humbled by greed and Western culture.

With its themes of power and political corruption, the opera could have been crafted for modern-day Asia, says the show's Thai director, Somtow Sucharitkul.

"It's all about how the gods become corrupted, so it fits," he said during a dress rehearsal a few days ahead of the show's opening night.

"Maybe we'll end up getting arrested or sued for libel," he quips, alluding to the frequent fate of government critics in this region.

Das Rheingold -- the first of a four-part series known as The Ring Cycle -- is being performed in Bangkok, with a world-class international cast and orchestra. And while none of the words or score has been changed, the production takes a Buddhist slant.

The theft of a golden ring, traditionally portrayed as a kind of Christian original sin, in Somtow's version launches the Buddhist cycle of karma, fueled by attachment or greed, that creates life and all its beautiful imperfections.

On stage, this is represented by a transformation from a timeless monochromatic Nirvana into a brashly colorful world of Western consumer goods.

In the first act, the singers wear traditional Southeast Asian royal court costumes. But by the time the curtain falls, they are wearing decadently Western attire: an Elvis-like golden jacket, a naughty schoolgirl outfit and a Hawaiian shirt that would be suit a tourist in a red light district in Bangkok.

Valhalla, the paradise that the chief god Wotan has sacrificed his soul to build, turns out to be a modern Asian metropolis.

The political implications should be clear to the audience in Thailand, where tens of thousands of people recently rallied to call for the ouster of the prime minister over allegations of corruption and abuse of power. Somtow notes political parallels could also be drawn to neighboring states like Myanmar and Cambodia.

He also draws parallels between launching Das Rheingold in Asia with its original premiere in Germany 1869: the audience and performers for the most part are unfamiliar with the music.

"It's like turning the clock back 150 years," he says. "That's why it could be very exciting, despite the imperfections."

Challenges in forming the unusual oversized orchestra needed may also help explain why Asia has waited so long to see this, considered by some to be one of the West's greatest artistic achievements.

The Wagner tubas -- a large horn designed by the composer -- were obtained from the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra by guest musician Hanz Pizka, who then trained local Thai musicians to play them.

Somtow managed to draft the seven harpists from Bangkok's harp academy. To fill out the necessary super-sized string section, about a dozen violinists were flown in from the Vietnam National Opera. Even so, the string section is smaller than it should be.

"We couldn't have fit any more in the orchestra pit," Somtow says.

Asian art stepping in for tired old West


Published on Oct 30, 2005


“The centre of gravity for the performing arts has shifted to Asia,” said SP Somtow, novelist and founder of the Bangkok Opera yesterday at the 22nd annual Conference of the Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion (FACP). While the West has long set the standard for excellence in the performing arts, the conference marked a turning point in Asia for the arts, other participants said.



Christopher Hunt, arts administrator, festival director, writer, artist manager, opera critic and television producer in Europe and North America, echoed Somtow’s point, saying that, “Western culture has exhausted its traditional cultural life.”

He said that elements making the arts successful, such as originality, had been lost in the West but have not yet been lost in Asia.

China is one of the most successful Asian countries in giving consumers a fusion of contemporary performance and Western cultural arts, and catering to modern audiences while still being built around traditional Chinese culture.

“There is a need to change and transform traditional arts and relate them to contemporary life,” said Zhang Yu, chairman of the FACP board of directors and general manager of the China Performing Arts Agency.

Zhang talked about a new show in Shanghai called “Arrow”, with Chinese acrobatics, new choreography and modern elements – among them performers wearing casual clothes – to show the rise of fusion in the performing arts in China.

Thailand is home to some of Asia’s best and most original performing arts.

However, problems including lack of infrastructure and networking have long held back the growth of the performing arts in Thailand. Somtow said that while sponsorship is a desired factor in supporting the arts here, it should be free of any intrusion on the originality of the producer of the arts. Vararom Pachimsawat, artistic director of a Thai dance centre, also says that while it has many talented people, Thailand needs more proper theatre promoters.

Another issue for the emergence of performing arts is the audience – which is demanding more while also being more prone to accepting new technologies, which means Asian performing arts need to catch up. Hunt discussed changing consumer needs. He said that while the performing arts have always been a public activity, private activities like the Internet, mobile phones and television will consume the audience’s time.

Kwang Wai-lap, general manager of the City Contemporary Dance Company of Hong Kong, said there must be a change in thinking and attitude before more people watch performing arts. This includes creating original performances to attract audiences of diverse tastes and lifestyles.

Leow Siak-fak, chairman of the Lyric Opera in Malaysia, also said that “creativity in the absence of an audience is meaningless,” and there is a need to build audiences who will become more sophisticated by creating “good packaging”.

Lisnaree Vichitsorasatra

The Nation

SIAM ON THE NILE: Bangkok Opera launches a production of ‘Aida’ set in 16th century ayutthaya

Since its launch in 2001, the Bangkok Opera has become the country’s leading producer of operas and classical music concerts. Its operas have had a fine mix of international guest artists and local talent performing world classics and original Thai compositions.

Though only four years in business, this company, under the guidance of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana and its artistic director, Somtow Sucharitkul, has firmly established Thailand as one of the few Asian countries with a regular opera season.

The international press has taken notice. In 2001, Opera Now magazine descibed the world premiere of “Madana” as “one of the operatic events of the year” and the International Herald Tribune hailed it as “a major achievement”.

Frederic Chaslin, Vienna State Opera’s resident director, commended “Mae Naak” (2003) for its “great lyricism” and said, “Somtow could become an important landmark in today’s music.”

Bangkok Opera’s 2004-2005 season continues with a highly anticipated production of Guiseppe Verdi’s timeless classic “Aida”. But this will be nothing like any “Aida” you have seen – the production will be given an Ayutthaya-period look.

The new interpretation of the love triangle will feature soprano Jessica Hsing-An Chen as Aida, the Ethiopian princess torn between love for her native land and a young Egyptian military officer, Radames, portrayed by American tenor Todd Geer. Mexican mezzo-soprano Grace Echauri will take on the role of Amneris, the jealous Egyptian princess whose love for Radames causes all-round tragedy.

Somtow, the man who put Thai opera on the world culture map, answered some questions about the new production and the future of opera in Thailand.

With the expansion of the Bangkok Opera, has Bangkok’s opera audience grown in the past few years?

It’s been slow progress, but every production has seen an increase in audience. The fastest growing group are young people, but opera aficionados are also waking up to the fact that this is a serious regional opera company with its own unique vision whose productions are now regularly covered by international opera magazines like Opera and Opera Now.

Has the Bangkok Opera received more support from the government or the private sector?

At first, there was no money at all. I had to finance our first productions from the sale of film rights to my stories. Now we have several year-round supporters such as Chevrolet, Hemaraj and the Arnoma Hotel Group, and the government has started to give us a little here and there. In Europe,

a government subsidy forms 80

per cent or so of many opera companies’ budgets. We would like more government support as long as it is understood that the company’s artistic vision cannot be controlled by any sponsor – a condition we insist on with all our sponsors. I believe that it is this artistic integrity that has made the Bangkok Opera one of the few seriously regarded classical music institutions in Southeast Asia.

Will Siam Opera, opening at Siam Paragon, be your new home?

We have been in discussions with them for the last couple of years and if the Siam Opera turns out to be a “real” opera house, we intend to mount an entire season there. I’ve now been elected president of the Asean Opera Alliance, which comprises the Bangkok Opera, Lyric Opera of Malaysia and Singapore Lyric Opera. We’re looking forward to making the season a three-country one with shared productions.

How was “Aida” given an Ayutthaya-period look? What were the parallels you saw?

In the 16th century, conditions in Siam and Burma more closely resembled the plot of “Aida” than any period in Egyptian history. That’s because the setting of “Aida” is a “fantasy” Egypt based on 19th century notions of the exotic East rather than reality. The Ayutthaya period had all the features of the “Aida” plot, including slavery, an endless war between two peoples very close in culture, the frequent exchange of royal hostages, a powerful priesthood, and last but not least – elephants.

Are there any other highlights Bangkok audience should look forward to?

I think the real highlight is the cast. The three leads in particular will astonish audiences in Bangkok. The stately Jessica Chen, the sultry Grace Echauri and the passionate Todd Geer – to me it’s a dream trio.

You have a 50 per cent discount on tickets for students and this will help build an opera audience for the future. Do you have any other educational programmes to further develop this?

The student audience is a vital one. We also have a subsidised ticket programme for certain groups of young people. In partnership with the National Centre for the Gifted and Talented, we have created an apprentice programme in which top young musicians play in the Siam Philharmonic, the opera’s orchestra, alongside professionals.

Pawit Mahasarinand

The Bangkok Opera presents the internationally acclaimed opera Aida. The production is the opera's eighth and biggest to date with more than 200 musicians, singers, extras and ballet dancers. San Francisco director Richard Harrell will lend his talents to the show as well as famed actress Jessica Chen, tenor Todd Geer from the US and Grace Echauri from Mexico. Local favourites such as Ralph Schatzki and Filipino bass Nomer Son round out the cast.

The production will also feature the Orpheus Choir and the 60-piece Siam Philharmonic, conducted by Maestro Somtow Sucharitkul, which includes additional players from overseas and an extra trumpet section for the exciting Triumphal March sequence. The modified opera set in 16th century Siam will be sung in Italian with Thai and English subtitles.

The two performances will run on April 28 and April 30 at 7:30pm at the Thailand Cultural Centre (main hall). Tickets are 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, and 2,500 baht. Discounts for Bangkok Opera Members and students with ID. Tickets are available at Thai Ticketmaster outlets or by phone at 02-262-3456 or visit the Web site at www.thaiticketmaster.com. Book from Bangkok Opera office at 02-661-4688/9.

-- THE BANGKOK POST

Miike's In The Soup
Meanwhile another Mike - well Miike to be exact - is also planning his English language movie debut. Cult Japanese director Takashi Miike (Ichi The Killer, Audition) is in talks to helm Dragon Fin Soup, an adaptation of a novel by Thai author SP Somtow. It's a fantasy comedy about an American ex-pat in Bangkok who befriends a Chinese woman and, er, a dragon.

Miike's promising to bring his own unique sensibility to the movie (it sounds unique enough to us already) when it starts shooting later this year. However, his involvement might depend whether or not the hard-working helmer manages to sew up his next project first, a Harry Potter-style vampire movie called The Big Spook War. High Noon can't wait for that one.

The Bangkok Opera, who in conjunction with the Bangkok Music Society and numerous Catholic organizations, put on Mozart�s Requiem at the Trinity Hall last Saturday the 22nd, were able to raise a million baht in contributions to aid victims of the tsunami disaster. Half a million baht was donated by Khun Patama Leeswadtrakul, a prominent philanthropist. Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana, patron of the Bangkok Opera, personally wrote a cheque for 50,000 baht.

Further donations, coming in during the Channel 11 broadcast of the Mozart Requiem later than evening, have not yet been tallied.

Somtow Sucharitkul, artistic director of the Bangkok Opera, put together the performance of Mozart�s Requiem with about 100 musicians on two weeks� notice. It was, in the words of the Bangkok Post, �as fine a performance as one is ever likely to hear anywhere.�

�Mozart�s Requiem is the world�s most recognizable anthem of bereavement and healing,� Somtow said. �Classical music is a wonderful avenue for people from all walks of life to be together, experiencing shared emotions, healing, and redemption.�

The Bangkok Opera has started a relief fund which will be administered under the guidance of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana. It has created a Bangkok Opera Tsunami Relief Committee headed by Khun Patama. �So many musicians from overseas have written to me, asking if they could come and play to help the victims,� said Somtow, �that we have decided to pledge a portion of every ticket sale to this fund for the rest of the year, as well as holding several more events throughout the year in which all donations will go to the fund.�

The next such event will be the opening concert of the Third Mozart and More Festival on March 1, in which Austria�s famed Haydn Quartet will play a program with the brilliant young Thai pianist Trisdee na Patalung.

For information on contributing to the disaster relief fund, please call the opera at (02) 661-4688/9, weekdays from 10:30 to 6.

Orchestral manouvres: Romance, grand virtuosity, sheer brilliance � this music has something for everyone

Somtow Sucharitkul�s new Queen Sirikit Piano Concerto in D flat is a study in romance, full of novelty and displays of brilliance, and a trip to the movies all at the same time.

The work, the third of a trilogy to honour members of the Royal Family, was written by royal command of Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana and is a gift to Her Majesty Queen Sirikit from the Bangkok Opera Foundation. It was performed in the presence of both the Queen and Princess Galyani. As a further honour to Her Majesty�s enlightened generosity in participating in an extraordinary range of welfare, educational, economic and cultural activities for the good of her country, the proceeds from the first performance of the concerto, given following a dinner on Tuesday night at the Dusit Thani hotel, are being donated to a breast cancer charity.

Perhaps not too much should be said about the music performed during the dinner itself, since the sound of cutlery and conversation made it difficult to appreciate. There were a number of recitals by members of the Siam Philharmonic Orchestra�s Apprentice Programme, and many of the young performers sounded on the nervous side, as well they might playing for Queen Sirikit and Princess Galyani. One of the musicians was notable, however. Trisdee na Patalung was the hardest to hear of all, the sound of his minimalist harpsichord easily getting lost, but his musicmaking (solo works of Rameau) had such variety, inner beauty and depth that it was inescapable. Conversations all around seemed to drain away as the musical message came through.

Somtow�s new concerto has a startling opening. Unsettled sounds come from the orchestra, then the piano rises out in a display of virtuosity, with bits of Chopin romance, Liszt brilliance, and many reminders that Khun Somtow is a writer of gothic horror novels.

The performance by the Siam Philharmonic orchestra and pianist Aleksandar Serdar, conducted by the composer, was exceptional. Ensemble and soloist enjoyed an inspired relationship with wonderfully colourful and thrilling piano playing matched sympathetically by the families of sounds in the orchestra, with only occasional thinness evident among the strings.

The dialogue between instruments was intense, but mitigated by a soft �Sirikit theme� that is repeated, pushing away the storminess around it and, according to Somtow�s intentions, transforming the dark elements of the first movement into light.

There are Latin themes in the second movement, and they come across a bit crazed, definitely fun, and with loads of life. The macho rhythms meant there was no need for coffee to keep the audience�s attention: looking around, everyone was very quiet and focused on the music. The movement was strongly played, with great discipline and excitement. The blazing virtuosity here was notable, but then transcended by the return of the romantic melody � and it was at this point that I began to develop a bit of a gripe. Yes, the music is creative and inspired, but somehow the schmaltz was being spread on just a bit too thickly and I felt that the romantic element was in need of development with more sensitivity and sophistication.

The third and final movement of the concerto presented a whirlwind kaleidoscope of sounds and continued to showcase the strengths of the Siam Orchestra, which Somtow has nurtured with such devotion.

Ultimately, however, I felt that the composition could do with more development to take it away from being salon or film music and to establish it as a classical masterwork. But then, Somtow is a man of many themes, and he has written one of those rare, modern, serious pieces that can be enjoyed by commoner and Queen alike.

Perhaps, therefore, I should not wish for yet another contemporary composition that ends up asking too many questions and, ultimately, yields more pain than pleasure.

The concerto can be heard once more tomorrow, when it is to be performed at the National Theatre in a concert that also includes music by Rossini, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss and Sibelius.

Jonathan Richmond

The Nation

A stunning Dutch feature-length documentary about an extraordinary Buddhist monk will have a soundtrack by Somtow Sucharitkul.

Two works by Somtow, the Etudes sans Frontieres and four songs from the collection Songs before Dawn were recently performed for the first time, the Etudes in Salzburg in the well-known Music in the Museum series, and the Songs at the Asian Composers Festival in Jerusalem. The Etudes, a collection of fiendish piano pieces, was composed as a gift for the composer's mother. Songs Before Dawn was originally commissioned by the Embassy of Norway in Thailand in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize.