Composer Sinta bridging East and West in music

Composer Sinta bridging East and West in music

Her shiny black hair in a tight, short bob reminiscent of 1920s'
actress Louise Brooks, musician Sinta Wullur gesticulates in an
Amsterdam cafe opposite the Tropenmuseum (Asian Civilizations
Museum).

Outside, great gusts of cold wind and gray skies remind us
that we are in Europe, far from Bandung where Sinta was born in
November 1958.

Scheduled to perform at an international women's musical
performance in Soeterijn, the museum's amphitheater, Sinta barely
had time to sit down for an interview, let alone grab a sandwich.
The dynamic 45 year old leads an active life; even when she comes
home to husband Jan Rokus van Roosendael, a composer and gamelan
player, the beat goes on.

Although Sinta was born in the capital of Sundanese music, at
home she grew up with Western classics played by her mother, a
noted piano teacher trained in the Netherlands. Her father was a
renowned Sino-Indonesian psychologist, who moved with his family
to Europe in 1968.

"I was accepted at Sweelinck Conservatory (in Amsterdam) at
the age of 17 and embarked on piano studies," Sinta said in her
clear voice. "But later on I realized that playing the piano is a
lonely profession, not like playing in an orchestra where there
is an exchange between fellow performers and one can even get to
play different instruments!"

Sinta had already begun to study composition at the
conservatory after graduating as an accomplished piano player and
was actively writing music for film and theater productions. In
1984, she studied composition with Ton de Leeuw at the same
conservatory.

She continued her studies at the Royal Conservatory of The
Hague with the composers Theo Loevendie and Louis Andriessen in
1988. Both teachers were drawn to non-Western music and helped
Sinta rediscover her roots.

"These composition teachers were deeply influenced by Eastern
philosophy and musical tonalities," she explained. "I felt that I
was not ignoring my own heritage while taking advantage of the
best on offer in Europe."

Sinta "rediscovered" Indonesia while on holiday, notably the
wide range of gamelan music in the archipelago. Between 1983-
1988, she returned to Bali in several summers and learned to
become part of a whole ensemble while mastering a range of
instruments, and then later in Java. In Amsterdam she joined the
gamelan group led by Elsje Plantema.

In Ubud and Denpasar, she enjoyed gender wayang and
accompanying wayang kulit (shadow puppet plays). Sinta even
accompanied famous Balinese dalang (puppetmaster) Wayan Wiji from
Sukawati gamelan group on his trip to Amsterdam. She also
perfected her knowledge of Sundanese singing and flute playing,
and later classical Javanese singing.

Sinta felt more rounded and fulfilled musically. In Bali she
founded the Balinese gamelan orchestras Tirta and Irama. Since
1992, she has been a pesinden (singer) of the Javanese ensemble
Widosari in the Netherlands.

Playing in Western and Eastern ensembles are two totally
different experiences, but what if one wishes to combine the two?

"Trying to compose music for both kinds of instruments annoyed
me because the basic sounds clashed, so I began to think about
another type of gamelan orchestra based on the Western scale,"
Sinta said. "I tried to envisage changing the traditional
pentatonic scale to a 12-tone chromatic scale."

The frustrated composer had heard of a solution to such a
problem in Denmark, where the percussionist Ivan Hansen had
constructed a chromatic gamelan in Balinese style. In 1990 Sinta
decided to give it a try after playing on Hansen's instruments.

Sinta ordered a set of gamelan instruments in Western tuning
from craftsman Pak Suhirdjan in Yogyakarta, but only after
sending him a set of 12 tuning forks normally used by piano
tuners to be sure that the gamelan would sound right. The new
gamelan was inaugurated on the occasion of the performance of
Lingkaran, composed by Sinta in 1995 for seven percussionists.
The gamelan instruments were placed on supports high enough for
Western musicians to play without having to sit cross-legged.

Sinta composed more new works for the concert series "Gongs &
Strings", one for chromatic gamelan only and one for chromatic
gamelan and cello solo. Ensemble Multifoon was born in 1998 and
played with the Odyssey String Quartet to produce the first CD
featuring Sinta's Mata Angin, Detlefsen's Malam dan Hari and Van
Zijp's Mel Benniget.

From then on, there was no stopping Sinta's creativity. She
began composing an opera based on the Ramayana, using a system of
musical flashbacks exploring the kidnapping of Sita. The first
40-minute version, The Golden Deer, premiered last November at
the small concert hall De Rode Hoed in Amsterdam. The sparse
budget made for greater creativity in costumes and verses
translated into English by a Canadian poet.

Understandably, audiences in the Netherlands are impatiently
awaiting the complete 90-minute version of Sinta's Ramayana
Opera. Sinta is already dreaming of bringing the opera to
Indonesia. Meanwhile, another joint musical project has just been
realized with the opening of Het Gamelanhuis in Amsterdam in mid-
January.

-- Kunang Helmi-Picard