Gan bridges musical divide with his guitar
Jim Read, Jakarta Post, Jakarta
It never ceases to amaze that Jakarta's much-loved theater-cum- concert hall, Gedung Kesenian (GKJ), manages to remain an oasis of calm, even as the site on which it stands functions as a traffic island on the edge of Pasar Baru, Central Jakarta.
The relentless roar of the capital's multifarious motorized vehicles is a constant reminder of the harsh realities of a modern-day metropolis, while the charming and graceful, colonnaded, neoclassical interior of GKJ instantly transports the visitor to a different world, where the more ethereal pleasures of the performing arts await.
The venue is similar in size and acoustics to London's Wigmore Hall, regarded by many as one of the best auditoriums in Europe, and which has also seen the public debut of many a musician who subsequently went on to reach worldwide fame.
In the midst of the intimate, salon-like atmosphere of GKJ, Bogor-born guitarist Michael Gan gave a captivating solo recital that was an enormously satisfying amalgam of classical guitar and traditional Indonesian music from many parts of the archipelago. He wrote the transcriptions over a two-year period.
Michael's technique is flawless, as evidenced by the numerous awards he has won at festivals throughout Indonesia and southeast Asia over the years. Having studied at Hoch Schulle fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Hamburg, under the tutelage of Prof. Eike Funk, Michael has established a well-deserved reputation as a performer who embraces a wide variety of styles in his guitar playing.
The recital, on Friday last week, formed part of the GKJ International Festival VII -- 2004, which concluded on Sept. 5. Michael's stance on stage was clearly that of a classical guitarist, with his left leg raised on a footstool to support the guitar, and the thumb of his left hand always behind the neck of the instrument - never visible when viewed from the front.
Although the sounds produced had the familiar intimacy, dynamic range and sheer plaintive appeal of the classical guitar, the melodies were drawn from the traditional music of places as widely scattered as North Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, North Sulawesi and Maluku.
The inevitable, tantalizing effect of this musical marriage was to imbue rhythms and tunes familiar to Indonesian ears with an unmistakable Spanish and, at times, flamenco flavor. The pieces were mostly short in duration, but each provided a whimsical cameo of the areas from which they originated.
The melody of a traditional lullaby from North Sulawesi was rendered as a rippling, tremolo that recalled the gentle flow and splash of water at an Andalusian water palace, as forms the thematic core of Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Spanish composer Francisco Tarrega.
A song from Maluku had the languorous sound of Hawaiian guitar complete with delicious slides, as the performer's left hand moved up and down the neck of his instrument.
Much of the music that originates from West Java, including gamelan, uses a pentatonic scale, an essential characteristic of the genre. Michael had to retune his instrument to accommodate this; so assured was his technique he was able, mid-performance, to make subsequent adjustments to the fine-tuning with his left hand.
In many of the pieces it sounded as though more than one performer was playing, even though this was a solo recital - a sure sign of technical accomplishment at the highest level. A piece based on a melody from Kalimantan was embellished with the sound of gentle drumming on the body of the guitar by Michael's right hand, the fingers of which were strumming at the same time.
Pieces from various locations in the archipelago sounded, at times, like the guitar music of Villa-Lobos, Granados or de Falla, with the occasional musical joke thrown in for good measure. A 70s rock guitar riff appeared early on as almost a throwaway musical aside: It could easily have been missed by those in the audience not paying sufficient attention.
Michael ended the recital with two extremely well-known songs, Bengawan Solo and Rayuan Pulau Kelapa, the melodies of which were clearly recognizable through a Spanish guitar overlay. The second song also lent itself particularly well to a Tarrega-like tremolo.
After the recital, Michael sang the praises of GKJ as a performance venue, which, on his reckoning, might well be the best, acoustically, in southeast Asia.
When asked if he had yet cut a CD of his engaging blend of Indonesian music performed in a classical guitar style, he replied with characteristic modesty, "I don't feel ready yet to record it for posterity, as I still need to do some work on the pieces."