The Emperor is a Violist!

I suppose I could call myself an accidental violist, and I am sure this is true for most musicians who play the viola in Goa and the rest of India.

My formal introduction to music learning was at the violin. All my major music achievements have been on this instrument. So why is it that, half a lifetime later, I found myself cradling its larger cousin, the viola, in my hands?

I became aware of the existence of violas and violists in Goa when I began playing in various string ensembles in my teens, and later with the Bombay Chamber Orchestra. But while I was aware of the differences (bigger, heavier instrument, tuned a fifth lower than a violin, read a different clef), somehow my curiosity did not extend to seriously trying out a viola myself, let alone taking it up.

But then in the 1990s I got employed in England, and a whole new world opened up. Orchestra rehearsals were much more intense and prolonged, and this is when I really got interested in the instrument. The choice of works (by Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Antonin Dvořák) also exposed me to the sheer chocolatey rich timbre of the instrument, and the lush writing for it in orchestral and chamber music.

On one of my biannual return visits home, I dropped in at Furtados and bought myself a viola and took it back with me with the intention of learning to play it. But the demands of my medical career, and my violin playing in chamber groups and orchestras taking up the scant free time remaining, ensured that this happened at a plodding pace at best.

On returning to India, I auditioned in 2011 to play violin in an orchestra here. And when conductor Vijay Upadhyaya enquired if I’d be happy to take up the viola as there were no takers for those positions, I leapt at the chance. We had a concert in six weeks, and I knew it would give me the impetus I needed to really learn to read the alto clef and to find my way about the instrument.

Since then, my life has changed. Although I still get asked to play violin on occasion, I get called out much more as a violist when it comes to chamber and orchestral playing. That’s the wonderful thing about being a violist. You’re far more in demand than you would be as a violinist. Violinists are a dime a dozen.

The belief that only those who can’t cut it as violinists take up viola is so unjust. All the good violists in my circle are wonderful violinists as well. In fact, once you take up the viola, the violin seems like a facile instrument, as it suddenly feels so much smaller, and the shifts and stretches seem far easier. The great violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini knew this well. So did so many other violin pedagogues like Max Rostal and Oscar Shumsky. The great living violinists Pinchas Zukerman, Shlomo Mintz and Maxim Vengerov play both with consummate ease, and have parallel careers as violists as well.

The viola and violists are the butt of many good-natured jokes (it is sometimes called “the Cinderella of the Orchestra”) on account no doubt of the unwieldiness of the instrument, its deeper tone (taking up the viola is often termed as “crossing over to the Dark Side”),

the paucity of virtuoso writing for it, and the relatively simpler part writing for it in chamber and orchestral music compared to the violin.

Some of my favourite viola jokes: What’s the difference between a violist and a vacuum cleaner? You have to plug in a vacuum cleaner before it sucks!

What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A violist.

What’s the difference between a viola and a coffin? Coffins have dead people on the inside.

Why don’t violists play hide and seek? Because no-one would look for them.

How do you keep your violin from being stolen? Put it in a viola case.

And there are a few ‘reverse’ viola jokes as well:

 

But we are in extremely good company. You’d be surprised to learn how many great composers actually themselves preferred playing viola to violin in ensembles. Let’s start with the ‘big’ ones: Johann Sebastian Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote about his illustrious father: “As the greatest expert and judge of harmony, he liked best to play the viola, with appropriate loudness and softness”.

But there’s also Monteverdi, Johann Stamitz, Mendelssohn, Paganini, Dvořák, Vaughan Williams, Eduardo Lalo, Ottorino Respighi, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Benjamin Britten, Frank Bridge, Carl Nielsen, all the way to Miklós Rósza and Kenji Bunch. Hindemith was a very respectable violist in his own right, besides being a composer.

And just in case you needed further proof that the viola reigns supreme among instruments: it has recently come to light that Japan’s newest Emperor Naruhito also plays viola.

 

He succeeded to the Chrysanthemum Throne on 1 May 2019 following the abdication of his father, Emperor Akihito, making him Japan’s 126^th emperor, according to the traditional order of succession.

He was born into an extremely musical family, with his father a cellist and his mother an extremely accomplished pianist.

He too began his introduction to music through the violin, while studying in Australia. But he decided to switch to viola, because he thought the violin “too much of a leader, too prominent” to suit his musical and personal tastes.

Naruhito once contributed an essay to a concert brochure in which he wrote:  “I’m starting to understand the role of viola, which doesn’t stand out, but (is needed because the) harmony becomes lonesome without it. … It’s a joy to have chosen the viola as a friend through which I could meet people and play music together.”

Toshio Shiraishi, a cellist and longtime friend of Naruhito through music, said in an interview that the Emperor’s choice of instrument, the viola, says a lot about the kind of man he is.

Naruhito is quite right when he refers to the viola’s vital contribution to the harmonic structure of a composition.  In so much ensemble writing in general, the viola, far from being just another ‘layer’ in part-writing, is actually the glue that holds the composition together.

Try listening to a Mozart string quartet or a Dvořák symphony without the viola line, and it becomes obvious. Dvořák and Vaughan Williams in particular wrote some wonderful orchestral parts for viola, and violists are eternally grateful for this.

And the vantage point in the orchestra is unique. The viola is close to the violins and the cellos, as well as to the woodwind and brass. I’ve learned so much about the genius of the great composers, their brilliant ensemble writing from this plum location.

Japan’s Emperor sends out a powerful message through his viola of not needing to “stand out” or be “prominent” in order to make a vital difference. One couldn’t find a more meaningful contemporary champion of the instrument.

(An edited version of this article was published on 12 May 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

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Dear Sanya Myla Cotta

I have been writing this column for close to six years now, but I don’t think my heart has ever been heavier than when I wrote down these lines.

I first heard on the journalist grapevine on 26 February on social media of your illness. Information was very sketchy but over the days to weeks that followed, it became apparent that you were valiantly battling a virulent pneumonia that had already compromised a significant portion of your lung capacity.

Not just your family, but virtually every prayer group that I know of, in Goa and even beyond has stormed heaven ever since the news of your illness broke. The specifics of the illness and treatment came through on social media in fragments, and it was difficult to piece together an accurate composite picture. But speaking to colleagues and experts, it was clear that you were fighting huge odds; which only further justified the recourse to prayer in addition to all the best medical treatment you were receiving.

There will be much said and written about your life history (cut short so cruelly) and your formidable achievements in that short time. But permit me to share my own personal experiences in the time that I knew you.

I knew your father, of course, from our own growing-up years at St. Cecilia Music School and thereafter. But I can’t remember exactly when I met you first. If memory serves correctly, it was at Myra Shroff’s house in Dona Paula sometime after 1995, when she took me on as her pupil. We met as I was leaving and you were coming for a lesson, or vice versa. I still remember lingering on to hear you play William Kroll’s ‘Banjo and Fiddle’ as a little teenager, pigtails whirring madly as you played.

Then although I left to work in the UK in 1998, for a while I continued to have periodic sessions with Myra on my biannual return trips home. On one of those trips, you were on the cusp of leaving for Germany and as I dropped you home, you shared your excitement about the new phase in your life.

When we relocated back in 2008, the friendship got stronger on your return trips and concerts to Goa. I took up viola (too few were playing it then) and joined your Indo-German music initiative. I cherish the long bus ride to Sanquelim and back for one of those concerts, both of us boxed in by the large double-bass occupying the aisle. I think our conversation on the bus and at the venue was possibly the longest I’ve ever had with you. At that time, and in two interviews I did with you for the local press, your enthusiasm for Goa’s music potential was apparent.

You could be great fun as well. I have such fond memories of all those rehearsals and concerts, and taking the “show on the road” to South Goa, Sanquelim etc. Your laugh and sparkling eyes could have lit up a city. After all these years, on a very downcast Easter Sunday after we heard of your passing (I heard it exactly at the time of Easter Vigil), I revisited an old video of a 2012 interview, and it brought tears to my eyes to hear your voice, watch you smile and listen to you laugh. It’s so hard to believe you’ve left us. Watching the video and reading our past correspondence, it still feels as if you’re just ‘away’ and will be back soon to visit, as you’ve done so often over the years.

I was astonished on looking back on our long email and Facebook threads, to realize how extensively and spanning so many years we had corresponded, about matters musical, in ‘your’ part of the world and ours.  It ranged from arranging a suitable time to listen to and coach some of Child’s Play India Foundation’s more advanced students, to much wider aspects of pedagogy in general and the future of music in Goa.

On one of your return trips we worked on music together. You looked through the pile of music I had brought along with me, and we both settled on two of the Mozart violin sonatas, in G major (no. 18, K. 301/293a) and E minor (no. 21, K. 304). As I go through the score now, so many things we discussed, bar-by-bar, come flooding back.

I played the G major sonata at your house concert later, and you played it as well, at your public concerts thereafter. It will be very difficult for me to listen to or play either of them again without tears welling in my eyes, for the memories they now hold, of you.

Your family has borne your two-month life-and-death battle with exemplary fortitude, immense faith, stoicism and grace. But as I type this in the final hour of Easter Sunday, I must confess that all day today, at the Easter service and thereafter, I have railed at God, asking him: “Why? Why? This girl had so much more to give, so much more to experience in this life, so many more generations of hearts and souls to touch and delight with her music and her enthusiasm for teaching, for Goa. Why couldn’t You leave her with us longer?”

God knows best, they say. But it is tough coming to terms with it. As a parent myself, albeit much later (although I’m just a few years younger than your dad, my son is over two decades younger than you), I cannot begin to fathom what your parents and brother are going through.

You were and are loved by not just your family, but by all of us. We, all of us, lost a much-loved daughter on 20 April 2019. This is why although you may have left us on one level, on another, you’ve not left and will never leave us. Sanya Myla Cotta continues to live in all our hearts. Forever and ever. Amen.

(An edited version of this article was published on 28 April 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

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Sanya Myla Cotta (9 March 1986 – 20 April 2019)

 

I had done a video interview of Sanya Myla Cotta in 2012, and eventually published its edited transcript for the local press and then forgot about the video.

Am revisiting it now, and it brings tears to my eyes to hear her voice, watch her smile and listen to her laugh. It’s so hard to believe she’s left us. Watching the video and reading our past correspondence, it still feels as if she’s just ‘away’ and will be back soon to visit, as she’s done so often over the years.

But in a more metaphysical sense, she’s not left and will never leave. Sanya is in all our hearts. 

Unforgettable: Nat King Cole (1919-1965)

All you people “of a certain age” reading this (by which I mean everyone older than myself, of course!) will have at least one Nat King Cole favourite that you can hum to, or even know the lyrics to, or perhaps it’s “your song.”

I have more than a few, from “Unforgettable”, to “Mona Lisa”, “A Blossom Fell”, “Ramblin’ Rose”, “Stardust”, and who could not love “Those Lazy, Hazy Crazy Days of Summer?” Perfectly sums up our barmy political climate in our own scorching summer.

In an age where the US and indeed the rest of the world was teeming with staggering vocal talent that quite rightly are legends today, the distinctive gravelly yet silky-smooth timbre of his voice stands out among that formidable lot. I’m sure that if you hear him on the radio, you’ll recognize him at once, while you might have a job distinguishing many of his contemporaries from one another.

But beneath the devil-may-care jauntiness of so many of his songs (“Get Out and Get Under The Moon” comes to mind)

he concealed a ton of racist abuse he suffered in the Jim Crow era, and the alienation he felt from the black community who felt betrayed that he was not more outspoken and active in the civil rights movement.

It was his birth centenary last month, 17 March. Nathaniel Adams Cole was born in the deep South, in Montgomery, Alabama. He had three brothers, one older (Eddie) and two younger (Ike and Freddie), all of whom also pursued careers in music; and a half-sister, Joyce. His mother was a church organist, which explained the immersion of the whole family in music. He learnt to play the instrument from her, with his first “public performance” of a novelty song at the age of four, and formal keyboard lessons at age twelve.

Having grown up in Alabama, the Cole family would have certainly experienced racism, perhaps regarded so commonplace that much of it isn’t even documented. But even the little that is known reveals how traumatic it must have been.

Nat King Cole was already a celebrity when he and his family purchased a house in the upmarket, all-white Hancock Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles. But they were the first black people to move into Hancock Park, which was considered unacceptable by his neighbours.

The harassment began with the Hancock Park Property Owners Association going to court in a bid to prevent the Coles from buying the house. Members of the association told Cole they did not want any “undesirables” moving into the neighborhood. Cole responded, “Neither do I. And if I see anybody undesirable coming in here, I’ll be the first to complain.”

His wife Maria Cole recalled the unpleasant episode in one of her last interviews before she died in 2012: “They really just didn’t want any ‘undesirable’ people in there. I don’t know how they had the guts to say it.”

Apparently, the property-owners association did have “legal” grounds: a covenant for the property reveals that the home was for whites only and not for “any person whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian race”. The only exception for “persons not of the Caucasian race” was if they were there in “the capacity of servants”.  Very fortunately for the Coles, a timely US Supreme Court ruling that same year banned racially restrictive property covenants.

When moving the courts led nowhere, the association tried unsuccessfully to buy back the house from Cole.

The harassment then began in earnest, with his dog being poisoned, and the Ku Klux Klan, alive and kicking in 1950s Los Angeles, placed a burning cross on his front lawn, and burned the N-word into the grass.

“It was not an easy time for him or his family,” said Cole’s friend Harry Belafonte with much understatement, in an interview. “Nobody wanted him.”

Cole faced discrimination elsewhere too. In 1956, on a gig in Havana he was prevented from staying at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba on account of its “colour bar.” The same hotel had also turned away boxing champion Joe Louis and singer Marian Anderson among many others. Today, the hotel pays tribute to Nat King Cole with a bust of him and a jukebox in its foyer.

Also in 1956, Cole was the victim of a racially-motivated attack while performing at a concert in Birmingham, Alabama, suffering an injury to his back. He stoically tried to downplay the incident. The assault mystified him, as he had until then kept out of the civil rights movement, and had continued to play for segregated audiences, arguing that one “couldn’t change the situation in a day.” Indeed, he was criticized by the black community for not being outspoken.

After the Birmingham attack, Cole received a telegram from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People):  “You have not been a crusader or engaged in an effort to change the customs or laws of the South. That responsibility, newspapers quote you as saying, you leave to the other guys. That attack upon you clearly indicates that organized bigotry makes no distinction between those who do not actively challenge racial discrimination and those who do. This is a fight which none of us can escape. We invite you to join us in a crusade against racism.” He was similarly castigated by others

But Cole had challenged racism, although not as openly. He donated money to the Montgomery Bus Boycott (a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama); and he sued hotels that hired him but refused to serve him.

However, Cole was chastened by the criticism in the black press, and emphasizing his opposition to racial segregation “in any form”, he agreed to join other entertainers in boycotting segregated venues. He became a lifetime member of the NAACP. Until his death in 1965, Cole was an active and visible participant in the civil rights movement, playing an important role in planning the March on Washington (made famous by Martin Luther King Jr with his “I Have A Dream” speech) in 1963.

A documentary on Cole’s harassment by Hancock Park was released in 2014. His daughter Natalie Cole found it hard to watch.  In an interview to the Independent, she stated “For us, it was very emotional.”

She added that the racism had not disappeared. “It is still there, it’s very quiet, it’s very subtle and it’s in so many different fields…. We have a way to go.”

There are strong parallels between the story of Cole and the way Dalits, minorities, tribals and Adivasis have been, and continue to be discriminated against in our country. We too have a long way to go.

(An edited version of this article was published on 14 April 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

The One Person who Believes in You

I’ve often been teased a little for my love of classical music, with the insinuation that I might not be that “with it” as everyone else when it comes to popular music. To some extent, that is true.

For instance, I really didn’t know very much about Lady Gaga or her music until I saw ‘A Star is Born’, the 2018 American musical romantic drama about hard-drinking musician Jackson “Jack” Maine (played by Bradley Cooper, who also makes his directorial debut in the film) who falls in love with struggling singer Ally (Lady Gaga), and the twist in the tale when her career skyrockets while his old demons continue to plague him.

I missed it when it came to our big screen, After reading so many rave reviews, all the awards and nominations,  and getting so many recommendations to see it from friends, I finally watched it recently on DVD to see what the fuss was all about.  And my verdict? The “fuss” is well-deserved.

For someone who openly confesses that she “sucked at auditions” (she studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for ten years), Lady Gaga delivers an incredibly powerful performance, bringing an honest, raw vulnerability to her character.

 

I am always intrigued by the entry-point of successful musicians to music. Lady Gaga (real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, born to Roman Catholic, Italian parents) began piano lessons in New York City at the age of four, at the instance of her mother, who felt it would facilitate her growth into “a cultured, young woman.” From all accounts, she was a diligent piano student through her childhood, and both parents supported her love, interest and pursuit of music.

Apparently, Lady Gaga’s real-life story couldn’t be more different than her character Ally in the film. By her late teens, Gaga knew what she wanted; she had acting aspirations, but when several auditions didn’t go her way, she plunged wholeheartedly into music. She had something to say through her music and songwriting, and worked tirelessly towards quite literally making herself heard.

In contrast, Ally in the film is in her mid-thirties, jaded and disillusioned by rejection and being told that despite her musical ability, she doesn’t have the looks to go further as a singer.

Much is also made of the fact that Lady Gaga wears no make-up or hair colour in the film, and that this is her ‘natural look’; I know “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”, but to my eyes, she’s far more bewitchingly beautiful without the war paint, and I think this is true for women in general.

How the idea for the film evolved is an interesting story in itself. Gaga has an impressive track record in philanthropy and activism, supporting causes ranging from natural disaster victims, the environment, human rights, LGBT rights, to medical research.

Bradley Cooper heard her sing ‘La Vie en Rose’ at a cancer research fundraiser, and approached her with the idea for the film. She agreed, not out of any conscious career decision to get into acting, but she was moved by the script and its portrayal of addiction and depression. And the fact that Cooper believed in her ability to do justice to the role, in this, his directorial debut film.

In fact, she got panned by a few, when in promotional events for the film, she kept repeating,   “There can be a hundred people in the room, and 99 don’t believe in you, but one does”, referring to the support she got from Cooper, “and it can change your whole life.”

Someone made a 90-second video montage stringing together all the times she said it, with Cooper looking on as if he’s hearing it anew each time. The video went viral, becoming a meme unto itself.

But if you watch it yourself, you’ll sense the honesty with which she says it each time. Does the message lose its meaning due to repetition? I think not; on the contrary, it shows it is a slogan she believes in very much.

Gaga’s pop-star rival Madonna shared on Instagram an old video clip of herself saying something similar, yet with the opposite conclusion (“There’s a hundred people in the room, and 99 people say they liked it—I only remember the one person who didn’t”). Whether this was meant to hint that Gaga had tweaked Madonna’s quote is open to speculation. But Gaga clarified that her own line was inspired by something her own vocal coach Don Lawrence (whom Gaga very colourfully described as the “aortic valve” to her career) used to say.

“I was taking meetings with entertainment attorneys and knocking on people’s doors, trying to get them to listen to demos that I made on a four-track Tascam cassette player, and he [Lawrence] said to me, ‘There can be a hundred people in the room, and 99 of them won’t believe in you, but all you need is one.’

That sentence would certainly have resonated deeply also with Lady Gaga the activist and philanthropist. If you espouse a cause, whatever it may be, and you literally or figuratively “knock on people’s doors”, you’ll know what a difference that one person out of a hundred, or a thousand or more, who believes in you, makes.

This has certainly been our experience in our decade since the inception of Child’s Play. Rather than focusing on the “ninety-nine people in the room” whose support we haven’t (yet) got, we are heartened by the “one person” or persons who’ve supported us from far and wide.

I’m thinking of a choir in faraway Germany who heard by word-of-mouth of our work, and spontaneously did a benefit concert there for us. And two choirs from Sweden (the most recent one, Vocal Colors, is still going viral online with their a cappella take on ‘Tambde Rosa’) who’ve come all the way here to do benefit concerts for us. And the slapstick-funny Wind-Up Penguin Theatre company, who keep returning every year to support us. And a musician couple (Riccardi and Bager, violin and flute) who visited us, did a concert for us, and were so touched by our children and our work that when they tied the knot back home, they asked guests, in lieu of wedding gifts, to make a donation to Child’s Play, and will perform with us later this year. And an unexpected but much-needed shot in the arm we received when someone wrote an op-ed in the local press recently appreciating our work, after having attended one of our concerts.  I’m thinking of so many of you “one persons”, too many to mention (and many of you wish to remain anonymous anyway), who’ve signed up for our “Adopt-a-Musician” scheme, and support us in so many ways, financially, or by volunteering, or spreading awareness about us, or just words of encouragement.

With the support of the “ninety-nine people in the room” we could achieve even more, but we are heartened by the “one person” embodied by all of you, who believes in us.

(An edited version of this article was published on 31 March 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

The Inspiring stories of Manami Ito and Adrian Anantawan

Do any of you watch the TwoSet Violin channel on YouTube? It is a classical comedy duo that takes an irreverent, sometimes wickedly funny look at the inside world of classical music.

It was founded in 2014 by two Australian violinists, Brett Yang and Eddy Chen, and soon went viral with “funny and sometimes painfully accurate videos depicting life as a classical musician.”

They have been featured on international media such as China Times, ABC News, The Violin Channel, Classic FM, SONY Classical Australia, WQXR, Yahoo, and The Strad. Their work has led to collaborations with other high profile artists such as Lang Lang, Hilary Hahn, Ray Chen, Janine Jansen, James Ehnes, Maxim Vengerov, and Anne Akiko Meyers.

Their slogan on their website is “Making classical music relevant to the modern generation through fun, humour and simplicity.” They now have two million followers and 300 million views across social media from all over the world.

While a lot of their videos are poking fun at various aspects of music-making and of listening to music, most of them have the underlying theme of nudging you, the viewer (through humour, of course), to PRACTICE. They wear T-shirts that say “PRACTICE. Just do it.”

They often refer to an off-screen fictional character Ling Ling, who is this “perfect violinist” who practices “40 hours a day.”

A recent video upload was titled “This will inspire you to practice”, and it brought a tear to my eye, when I not only realized how fortunate I am, but I also saw what human determination, grit, courage and perseverance can accomplish in the face of adversity.

The first part of the ten-minute video shows a Japanese woman named Manami Ito playing the violin. This is no ordinary woman; she doesn’t have a right arm. She was a nursing student aged twenty when she lost her whole right arm in a car accident, in a collision with a large truck.

She began learning the violin at age seven, and loved the instrument. You can imagine how devastating such a loss would have been. “I lost all hope”, she confesses in a video clip. “I left [nursing] school and didn’t leave the house for a year.”

Those of you who are amateur or professional musicians, who have suffered some form of even temporary disability will relate very much to what she went through. I certainly do.

In January 1983, I was in a Kala Academy minibus along with many others, when it hurtled out of control down the Banastarim slope and tumbled to a crashing halt. I emerged relatively unscathed compared to others, but the side of my left index finger was cut to the bone. I’m left-handed as well, which added insult to injury. For several agonizing months, I had no sensation in the finger, and could barely move it, so I couldn’t even write, let alone play the violin. I despaired of ever playing gain, and it really depressed me. It took a year to get back in shape. And more recently, a freak swimming pool accident injured that same finger, but I recovered more quickly.

I don’t dare compare my injury to Ito’s; I merely make the point that I appreciate even more her despair and her indomitable will to rise out of her misfortune.

Most people would indeed have given up.  However, at the centre where Ito went to get an artificial arm fitted at a centre, people with similar disabilities were playing basketball! It inspired her to set her own goals and work towards them.

Since then, she has completed her nursing course, and is Japan’s first nurse with a prosthetic arm; is a Paralympian swimmer; and using a customized prosthetic bow, is playing the violin again with remarkable precision.

Any player of a bowed stringed instrument knows how much emphasis there is on the bow-hold. Although we say we play the violin/viola/cello, in actual fact we are “playing the bow.”

“You don’t realize how lucky you are to have an arm, until you don’t have one,” says Brett in the video. He then gently scolds those of us who have “functional arms” but don’t practice. We put it off “because we can practice any time we want.”

“Manami doesn’t need to play the violin, she doesn’t have to play the violin. But out of just sheer determination, she figured out how to get this mechanical arm that’s engineered for her, just to play the violin.”

It’s not easy. She needs the assistance of a guiding post to “steer” her bow so that it plays perpendicular to the strings. She doesn’t have the benefit of “arm weight” to give heft and gravitas to her sound, and it therefore sounds weak and thready. But from the smile on her face, she’s just so happy to be back with her beloved instrument.

“The next time you don’t feel like practicing,” Brett tells us, “remember, Manami is practicing. If she can, so should you.”

The next story is even more awe-inspiring. Thai Chinese-Canadian violinist Adrian Anantawan was born without a right hand, but that didn’t deter him from picking the violin aged nine. In 1999 and 2000, Anantawan earned positions with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, becoming one its youngest members both years.

In 2006, after enjoying a full merit scholarship, Anantawan graduated from the world-renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He has studied with Ida Kavafian, Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman.

In the TwoSet video, Anatawan is shown playing Eugène Ysaÿe’s third Sonata (“Ballade”) from his set of six Sonatas for unaccompanied violin, an extremely daunting work in the whole violin repertoire. The caliber of the performance is nothing short of phenomenal by any standard.

Watching Anantawan play one notices several things: He needs a device strapped to his shortened forearm which is in turn attached to his bow.

One also realizes how important the right wrist and hand are to violin-playing, when watching someone play without their benefit. Anantawan is unable to use the whole bow length, but merely the central 2/3 or so. Furthermore, the bow crosses the strings in an arc as he lacks the wrist-fingers mechanism other players have to keep the bow straight at all times. Yet, he, like Ito, has had to reinvent a whole new bow technique to overcome these hurdles. He has the advantage of arm weight, that Ito doesn’t, and it does wonders for tone production. If you close your eyes, you wouldn’t believe it was the playing of someone missing a right wrist and hand. He plays double- and triple-stops with incredibly consummate ease.

Here’s Adrian at a TEDx talk:

Ito and Anantawan are an inspiration for us all. To all of you who play an instrument (and this is a note to self as well!), to paraphrase what Brett said. The next time you don’t feel like practicing, remember: Ito and Anantawan are practicing. If they can, so should you.

(An edited version of this article was published on 17 March 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

 

The South-East Asian Phenomenon

The latest issue of The Strad magazine carried an article “Why do South Korean string players do so well at competitions?”

It was shared on their Facebook page, with this provocative, clickbait extract: “Just as daughters of the well-to-do in Europe’s patriarchal bourgeoisie societies of the past practised the piano in preparation for becoming accomplished housewives, talented Korean daughters have a better chance of capturing the attention of a ‘good husband’.”

It attracted revulsion and condemnation from the readership of string players and pedagogues from all over the world. The comments ranged from one-liners like “Ugh! Strad fail!” and those in agreement chiming in, “To say the LEAST!”, to much more verbose rebuttals.

Not surprisingly, the link to the article was taken down within hours of its being uploaded on Facebook. Several dedicated readers were sufficiently outraged to cancel their subscription to the magazine.

The title of the article promised so much, and I waded into it so eagerly, but the extract that was available online before it was taken down was disappointingly sparse, and ended with the sentence that caused offence to so many.

I have since read online that the full, four-page article is much more balanced, and I hope to read it soon if possible.

I had hoped the article would address so many questions I have in my mind, not just about South Korea’s success story, but of so many other countries in South-East Asia as well (Japan, Singapore, China, Taiwan).

What is it about the milieu, the ethos in those countries, that makes little children practice so hard so early and for so long every day, and that makes parents encourage their children to put in the long hours and hard work? How do parents juggle family routine, their own jobs and lives, as well as the school and extra-curricular activities of their children apart from music, and how do they afford not just the money but also the time to ferry their children to lessons, masterclasses, rehearsals, competitions?

We hear of just the success stories, but do some families also attempt but drop out for whatever reason? If so, what happens to those children? Do they continue to play, or is the experience traumatic for some and leave psychological scars? Do families, both the child, and the parents/guardians and extended family enjoy the process of the study and pursuit of music, even if the child doesn’t go on to win awards or competitions?

Does strict adherence to a rigorous practice regimen sometimes cross the line into child physical or psychological abuse? To what extent is the threat of punishment (physical beating, or withholding food or water, or some sought-after pleasant diversion other than music, by a child, such as time on the playground with friends, a toy or video game) implicit in some of these regimens? These questions are pertinent not just to South-East Asia, but every time one watches a YouTube video of a three- or four-year old from any part of the world play a piece well beyond their years. The mind conjures up all sorts of stereotypes to rationalize how an incredible feat is accomplished, but I suspect that love of music and a willingness to work at an instrument because of it is the foremost factor.

The Strad article readily acknowledges that “the undeniable technical prowess and – crucially – musical sophistication of these young and ambitious instrumentalists is quite phenomenal”, and that the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC), which represents 122 contests in 40 countries, has registered a recent increase in South Korean candidates entering international events.

That not just South Koreans, but South-East Asians in general are storming all the citadels of western classical music is an indisputable fact. Everywhere one cares to look, not just competitions (and not just string players, but also pianists and singers), but plum positions in major orchestras and opera houses around the world, their representation has increased to the extent it is now accepted as a given.

This is all the more remarkable because so many of the South-East Asian countries mentioned have a history of deep suspicion of the West, and things perceived as ‘western’. Although music conservatories in China produced instrumentalists and composers in the 1950s, western music was banned altogether during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. But the turnaround after that has been nothing short of dramatic.

Japan’s policy of isolationism ended with American Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s ‘gunboat diplomacy’ of 1853, the imposition of unequal treaties by other imperialist powers as well, and the fall of the shogunate in 1868. Western classical music flourished even further in its post-World War II history.

As for South Korea: The Strad article quotes Emeritus professor Joseph Kim of Seoul’s Hanyang University who dates the country’s initial encounters with western classical music to shortly after the Korean War (1950–3).

The yawning gap between the advances made by the South-East Asian countries and our own is commented upon in the February issue of Gramophone magazine in their coverage of the Symphony Orchestra of India’s tour of the UK this month.

Its author, Simon Broughton writes: “Certainly the comparisons are startling. India (1.36 billion) and China (1.4 billion) have almost the same population, yet China has over 70 orchestras to India’s one. Tokyo has eight orchestras for a population of 9 million, while Mumbai’s one orchestra serves a potential audience of double that (18 million).” Clearly, we have a lot of catching up to do.

An iconic role model can do wonders. In The Strad article, violinist–conductor Jehi Bahk of the University of Suwon, in Hwaseong, speaks of the motivation provided by the success story of Kyung Wha Chung, “the first violin star after the Korean War, which “led to a boom in regimented, dedicated practice, and because their hero was female, classical music became a chiefly female business compared with male-dominated Europe.” This isn’t entirely true, as there are scores of highly successful male Korean musicians as well.

But the point is well taken. China has its own classical music superstars, with the likes of Lang Lang spawning a similar “boom in regimented, dedicated practice”, and so also does Japan, with Seiji Ozawa, Midori, Mistuko Uchida, and so many others.

Why does India, and indeed our whole South Asian region, lag so far behind South-East Asia? Could it be, as a British conductor once said to me, that we lack the “application factor”? Even the more advanced of our young budding musicians (barring some exceptions, I hope) will have to acknowledge that they practice far fewer hours a day than their South-East Asia counterparts. But we have “application factor” in spades when it comes to cricket, information technology, mathematics, or the sciences.

Or could it be that our youth and their parents do not see viable (forget about lucrative) career paths or a future in western classical music? This is an issue that has to be tackled on so many fronts, but uppermost among them is a robust, comprehensive, world-class music education system, which we have to admit to ourselves is not readily available on the ground.

(An edited version of this article was published on 03 March 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

A Dance of God

Last month, we experienced a compulsory internet detox for ten days or so (thank you Gwave!) for reasons that were never disclosed.

I am very grateful to my friend Nigel Britto for informing me that the great Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma would be performing in Mumbai. This would in itself be a milestone concert, on his first-ever visit to India.

To top it all, he would be playing the entire set of six suites for unaccompanied cello (BWV 1007-1012) by that towering musical genius, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).

And… get this… he would be playing them all (from memory, of course!) at one marathon concert, two-and-a-half-hours long, no interval!  Mumbai would be one of only 36 locations worldwide on Yo-Yo Ma’s “Bach Project”, where he would play all six suites “in one sitting”.

Music-lovers will know how rare cello recitals are in Goa. This is a reflection of the relative paucity of cello teaching here, something that Child’s Play India Foundation has been working hard to address. When cello recitals do happen, we’re lucky to get one movement from one of the Bach cello suites. So to have them all performed by certainly one of the greatest living cellists would be a momentous occasion.

As Ma describes it on his dedicated “Bach Project” website, it is a “journey” motivated not only by his six-decade long relationship with the music, but also by Bach’s ability to speak to our common humanity at a time when our civic conversation is so often focused on division.”

That struck a chord in me, as it should in all of us, whether in his country, or ours, and indeed in most of the world today, where exclusion and division unfortunately have so much greater currency and state, political and societal backing than inclusion and harmony.

It is noteworthy that Yo-Yo Ma, at sixty-three, is the exact same age that another great cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007) was when he in 1991 first “plucked up the courage” to record all the Bach cello suites (although Yo-Yo Ma did do it once before, in 1983).

Rostropovich too, in the DVD introduction admitted that he’d been “closely linked to them” all his life, with “nothing in the world more precious” to him. “These compositions always allow you to discover something new. Each day, each hour, each minute you reflect upon them, you reach deeper.”

There is something prayerful, spiritual even, that one experiences, when one plays or listens to them. English music critic, musicologist and composer Wilfred Mellers called it “Monophonic music in which a man has created a dance of God.”

With the internet still down, I had to call a friend in Mumbai who got us tickets. In the run-up to the concert, I read (and re-read) as much as I could about them. One fascinating book is the lovingly-written “The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals and the search for a Baroque Masterpiece” by Canadian musician and writer Eric Siblin.

A former pop music critic for the Montreal Gazette, he began a voyage of discovery after listening to a recital of the Cello suites, taking him to the backstreets of Barcelona, to interviews with master-cellists; to archives, festivals and conferences; and even to cello lessons – “all in pursuit of answers to the mysteries that continue to haunt the music more than 250 years after its composer’s death”, and around three centuries after the Suites were written (around 1717-1723).

Rostropovich said that “the hardest thing to achieve, in interpreting Bach, is the necessary equilibrium between human feelings, the heart which undoubtedly Bach possessed, and the serious and profound aspect of interpretation. Bach has no shallow or transitory emotions, no momentary anger, no bad words, no fleeting embraces. His emotions are on as vast a scale as Shakespeare’s. These are emotions common to all people on earth. We all weep when we suffer, we all know tears of joy. It’s these fundamental emotions that Bach transmits in his Suites. They demand more than a lightweight approach. But you can’t automatically disengage your heart from the music. This was the greatest problem I had to resolve in my interpretation.”

This absence of anger in Bach’s music is something I have often remarked upon as well. Perhaps this is also why Ma thought it apt for our time.

Like him, Rostropovich too thought of the Suites as a “cycle”, one that increases in intensity and complexity, each Suite’s Prelude increasing in length, until the final Suite is, as he terms it, “a symphony for solo cello.” He gave titles to each Suite: ‘Lightness (Suite no. 1, G major); ‘Sorrow and Intensity (no. 2, D minor); ‘Brilliance’ (no. 3, C major); ‘Majesty and opacity’ (no. 4, E flat major); ‘Darkness’ (no. 5, C minor); and finally, ‘Sunlight’ (no. 6, D major).  His views on key-colour relationships of the Suites are quite fascinating.

He chose to record the Suites in a church whose “severity of line and rhythm of architecture” so powerfully reminded him of Bach’s music. These considerations may not have been on Ma’s mind when he played for us at the NCPA’s Modernist-style Tata theatre, but we got lightness, sorrow, intensity, brilliance, majesty, darkness and sunlight all the same.

Ma strode onto the stage with a spring in his step, sat down, waited until latecomers had settled down, and proceeded to play the entire cycle, with barely an intake of breath between movements, and a brief pause between Suites. He seemed to be having an intimate conversation with the Universe, and we were mere eavesdroppers. If he did pause at “half-time”, after the third Suite, it was to make an emphatic point about the incessant coughing in the audience (more about this in another column, perhaps?), which quite visibly seemed to be disturbing his intense concentration. It disturbed the rest of us as well, but over time he and we tuned out the compulsive coughers who didn’t have the good grace to leave.

The concert was a Bach pilgrimage, with each of the 36 movements (six movements in each Suite:  prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets or two bourrées or two gavottes, and a final gigue) revealing a different aspect of his genius. As Ma put it, the first three Suites seemed to him Bach’s way of showing us what the cello could do; the last three on the other hand, what the cello could NOT do, but Bach invites us, the listener, to “complete” it in our imagination.

It is interesting that both Ma and Rostropovich particularly love the intimate Sarabande in the fifth Suite. Ma chose to play this movement on September 11, 2002 at Ground Zero, while for Rostropovich it was “most genius composition – just three lines, that’s all, but so precious!”

When I was young, old-timers would tell me, “I heard Heifetz when he came to Bombay.” One day, I’ll tell my grandkids “I heard Yo-Yo Ma play all the Bach Cello Suites in Mumbai.” This is the stuff of legend.

(An edited version of this article was published on 17 February 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)

You can hear him play the Six Suites (at the BBC Proms 2015):

 

Tambde Rosa

 

A little background: Vocal Colors is an a capella choir from Sweden, and very kindly offered to do a benefit concert for us, Child’s Play India Foundation.

One of its choral directors, Marie Bejstam, requested me to recommend a popular Konkani song that Vocal Colors could prepare as a surprise encore for the concert.

I suggested ‘Tambde Rosa’, and sent a recording, with lyrics, and much discussion over proper pronunciation of the lyrics.

They won the hearts of the packed audience at Menezes Braganza hall yesterday evening. I can honestly say I’ve not heard an a capella choir of such high calibre and capability ever sing here before!

Watch, listen and enjoy!

Vocal Colors

Child’s Play India Foundation (www.childsplayindia.org) completes a decade of its existence in 2019-2020! We’d like to really celebrate this significant milestone.

We begin the celebrations with a benefit concert by Vocal Colors, an a capella choral ensemble from Sweden.

In October 2014, I was one among 150 delegates from 28 countries (and the only one from India) chosen to participate in the first of its kind, a four-day International Sistema Teachers’ Conference organised by Sistema Scotland in Stirling. It offered me a unique opportunity to meet like-minded individuals also committed to music education and social empowerment, from a wide range of locations around the world: Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, USA, Venezuela, Vietnam and Wales.

Among that vast community of nations, the Swedish contingent stood out pretty prominently. They kept breaking spontaneously into song at every opportunity, and their infectious enthusiasm got the rest of us singing as well.

This is where I first met Cecilia Öhrwall from El Sistema Södertälje, close to Stockholm, Sweden. She already had a connection with India, and had been visiting and working with a music school in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. She was planning a return trip to India the following year and suggested visiting us at Child’s Play India Foundation in Goa.

Her Sångföreningen Qöhr has since sung two benefit concerts for Child’s Play, in 2016 and 2018, to packed audiences, and she and her choir members have infused some of their enthusiasm to our children who participated in their workshops during their visits.

It is through Öhrwall that we are now welcoming yet another choir from Sweden, Vocal Colors.

Vocal Colors is a newly-minted vocal ensemble that sings a capella music of all genres. The warm-hearted, music-loving and well-trained young singers come from all over Sweden and gather for repetitions five weekends a year. In its second season, it embarks on its first international tour, with a benefit concert in Goa for Child’s Play India Foundation.

“A capella” literally means “in the manner of the chapel” in Italian, and is today used to refer to singing by an individual or group without accompaniment, or to music performed in this fashion.

The term was coined as a capella music originally referred to religious music sung in church. Jewish and Christian music were originally a capella. Today a capella music embraces all periods, styles and genres, ranging from sacred music, to pop, jazz, barbershop and more.

The European a capella tradition is especially strong in the countries around the Baltic and perhaps most so in Sweden as described by American choral conductor Richard Andrew Sparks (b. 1950) in his doctoral dissertation on postwar Swedish choral music (“Swedish A Cappella Music since 1945”, University of Cincinnati, 1997), later published as “The Swedish Choral Miracle” in 2000.

Swedish a capella choirs have over the last quarter of a century won around one-fourth of the annual prestigious European Grand Prix for Choral Singing (EGP) that despite its name is open to choirs from all over the world.

There are several reasons for the strong Swedish dominance in choral singing in general.  It has been estimated that as many as 6 to 7% of the Swedish population regularly sing in choirs. To put it differently, 600,000 Swedes are estimated to have an active involvement in choirs (2014) out of a population of just nine million.

The Swedish choral director and influential choral teacher Eric Gustaf Ericson (1918 – 2013) had an enormous impact on a capella choral development not only in Sweden but around the world.

Ericson went to study medieval music at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland for a year and returned with a vision: a return to the music of the Middle Ages, but also those same vocal ideals. A pure, non-vibrato sound and line that would allow voices to blend perfectly, and allowing the collective body of sound to be moulded and shaped by the conductor as though it were one composite instrument.

After he took over the leadership of the Swedish Radio Choir in 1952, he took its level of excellence to such heights that it attracted the world’s great composers of the time, from Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland to Luigi Dallapiccola and György Ligeti, to say nothing of home-grown Swedish composers such as Lars Edlund, Ingvar Lidholm and Sven-Erik Bäck.

To quote Swedish arts journalist, critic, presenter and radio and TV producer Sofia Nyblom: “Eric Ericson’s work with choral singing is emblematic of the strength of a democratic society: pluralism of expression and submission under the vision of unanimity. It has certainly provided the hotbed for the stars of one of our major exports – music – and continues to provide a source for rejuvenation and creativity.”

Another significant reason that choral singing finds such fertile soil in Sweden is the fact that there are a large number of very popular primary and secondary schools (music schools) with high admission standards based on auditions that combine a rigid academic regimen with high level choral singing on every school day, a system that started with Adolf Fredrik’s Music School in Stockholm in 1939 but has since spread throughout the country.

The founders and musical leaders of Vocal Colors are the nationally awarded conductors Marie Bejstam and Charlotte Rider. They both lead several choirs in the Stockholm area. Together they also run a culture house, Kulturfyren (the Culture Lighthouse) which they founded in the central of the capital eight years ago. Marie and Charlotte are also often called upon to lecture and teach at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm.

(An edited version of this article was published on 13 January 2019 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)