Music Fiesta with Andry Effendy Music, Bandung

Dateline: Sunday 23 Nov 2008

It is 5am in the morning and we are getting ready to go to the van-station to wait for our van to bring us on a 2 hour van-ride through the scenic view from Jakarta to Bandung. Bandung is a nice hill resort style kind of town where the air is much cleaner and cooler than JAkarta. This town has streets lined with shops after shops offering mass factory-produced clothes. It is virtually a shopper's bargain paradise.

We arrive in Bandung at around 10am and go straight to the Auditorium Graha Kadin, the selected venue of choice for our Music Fiesta and MPA activities arranged for by Andry Effendy. After a bit of checking out the equipment and tuning of the pianos, we proceed to lunch. After lunch, the activities begin with the MPA performers coming on-stage first. After the young talented children have performed, we took out the new Rhythm Game cards and proceeded to have a game with them. The game of choice was the composition game as most of these kids were already around the ages of 7 to 8 years old.

It was a very interesting session and htese kids could come up with some pretty nice compositions of their own. I would say that this group managed the games very well because some of these kids managed to write some pretty impressive music at that very young age.

Later in the day after the MPA session was over, it was Wilson's turn to take centre stage with the children from the Music Fiesta performing the compositions of Christopher Norton and Pam Wedgwood. Again, it seemed that Bandung had quite a lot of good talent as some of these kids performed flawlessly. After Wilson's input on improving performance and technique, we had the photo session. As you can see there were many happy faces as the kids seemed to have received mor than they had bargained for.

After all the performances were over, we had a short break before dinner where we took this time to meet with some members from the locally formed association which looks into the interest of classical musicians. Their role seems to be some kind of a check-and-balance routine for musicians to provide a platform for discussions and performance. For this afternoon we centered our discussion around the topic of the positive and negative attributes of sending young children for competitions.
The evening program consisted of a performance recital from Wilson and also some selected participants from the afternoon's program.

Music Fiesta with CDE Music, Jakarta

Dateline: Friday 21 November 2008

Today we head to Serpong, which is a little north west of Jakarta to Miriam Kuswanto's studio, CDE Musik. We arrive there early and already Miriam has prepared some cakes and coffee for us. Quite a number of her teachers are also there waiting for Wilson's workshop to begin. We wait for a little while for some more of her teachers to arrive and then begin the workshop. Again, we had some teachers prepare some pieces to perform for us. Here you can see Wilson explaining the finer points of technical atriculation to the teachers on the finer aspects of contemporary music.


At this workshop, Wilson also encourages teachers to take on a more proactive role as in performing along together with their students.

As we progress into the second part of the workshop, I take over and pull out the newly designed Rhythm game cards. We talked about the usage of these cards and what steps to take to initiate students into a session of simple composition.

As the game progresses, things get more tense and exciting for these teachers because a forfeit has been imposed on the unsuccessful ones.

Just before we break for lunch, we have our group teachers' photo session. As you can see how each of them is proudly showing off their certificates of participation.


After lunch, we come back to the Music Fiesta sessions for the afternoon. Today there has been no MPA arranged for me so it is just the students performing pieces from Christopher Norton or Pam Wedgwood. There are three sessions arranged for.

Session 1

Session 2

and finally session 3

The whole activity ended around 7 in the evening and we were already almost wiped out, but overall, it was a very good day for us and we would like to thank Miriam for having us at her studio. She has also been most supportive of all our Rhythm MP activities.

Music Fiesta with Excellent Music, Jakarta

Dateline: Thursday 20 November 2008

Today we are at Marie's studio called Excellent Music located at Kebun Jeruk. Her studio is quite nicely decorated with the blue clouds painted on the ceiling of her studio. We arrived at her studio early and already coffee was already ready and waiting for us.

So we downed our coffee and some light snacks and started with the teachers' workshop she had arranged for Wilson. As usual some of the teachers had prepared pieces from Christopher Norton's Concert Collection to perform for us.

After the performances, Wilson proceeded with the workshop to work on chords and adding tensions to chords and how to apply chords to a piece of music. Teachers were divided into groups of around 4 to work together on a set piece which they were allocated.

Interactive is the word and after you had the theory down, you need to put it into practice so as to be able to hear how it will sound. Here the teachers are playing out what they have written in order to hear how it sounds.

The whoe workshop went until lunch time and after we came back from lunch for the summing up there was another group photo session to remember this workshop.

Later in the afternoon, we had the participants for the MPA session. As usual the young little performers stepped up to the grand piano to perform their piece. It was a very good afternoon of music and to see some of these little kids performing for the first time in a public event was quite exciting. After the performances, each child was presented with their follow-up books and you could see that they were certainly looking forward to it.

After we were done with the little children, it was time for the older kids to show their stuff, and they were certainly good. They performed quite well and we all had quite an enjoyable afternoon of good music by these children. At the end, they each received a certificate of participation for their effort.

Of course, every time when Wilson is giving a workshop at Marie's studio, he has a very loyal fan in the most distinguished Ibu Latiffah, a very prominent music educator and writer for music education books.
She has always attended Wilson's workshops and she is a very open-minded person who believes strongly that music is a never ending learning journey.
Well, Ibu Latiffah, we wish you all the very best!!!!

Music Fiesta with Trinity Musik, Jakarta

Dateline: Wednesday 19 November 2008

Today is Wednesday and we are now in Jakarta. It is in the morning and we are now in the distric of Pluit, north of Jakarta. This area is mostly chinese dominated and most of the residents are from Medan and it gives Wilson and me a chance to speak hokkien again with some of these people. The food around this area is also very much in similarity with the food of Penang.

We start our morning off with a round of workshops with the teachers of Trinity Music. They had prepared some of Pam Wedgwood's pieces to perform for us and after that Wilson gave some pointers as to how each performance could be improved and also how contemporary music should be interpreted. Here you can see Wilson showing how some areas of interpretation for contemporary music should be emphasied


As usual, any workshop would not be complete without a photo session to remember this occassion by. Incidentally, the owner Ms. Ellyn is the lady in black, second from the far right.



After the teacher workshop finished at around slightly after lunch, the students session started with the MPA performances with the children of Trinity Musik. At the end of the performances, they were rewarded with a follow-up book of their existing lesson book. You can see here, Ms. Ellyn giving out the books to the MPA children and just check out the happy faces!

Again, here you have another photo session of the children from the MPA session with their brand new Rhythm books by Lina Ng.
OH! That's me in the middle (back row) for those of you who still don't know me!!!

After we finished with the MPA session, it was time to bring out Wilson for the Music Fiesta where most of the students performes compositions from Pam Wedgwood and Christopher Norton's books. These children also received a certificate of participation from Rhythm MP Malaysia.


And what event would not be complete without a group photo of our most valuable hosts, Ms. Ellyn, and her husband Pak Arfusin of Trinity Musik. So here we have from left to right, Ms Yuni (Rhythm MP Jakarta), Ms. Ellyn, Wilson, Pak Arfusin, and yours truly.

Music Fiesta with Cendana Musik, Probolinggo

Dateline: Sunday 16 November 2008


It was not a very long trip interms of distance from Surabaya, but the roads to Probolinggo were not very forgiving coz they were really narrow at certain places. The situation was further aggravated by it being Saturday night that we had to travel. There many vehicles on the road with families going on road trips to Surabaya. But we finally arrived in Probolinggo and this is quite a quaint town with a very laid-back pace. Today is Sunday and we are going to have our Music Fiesta and MPA in a "bioskop" which is actually a movie theatre.

We started our event with the MPA students performance first. After the performances, we conducted an activity which is a first considering we were using the Rhythm Gamecards for the first time with these children in Indonesia. We chose to use the note-value cards to do a bit of composition with the children.

After they finished their compositions, there was the phototaking session and as you can see from these pics, every child received a follow up book for their continued piano lessons.

Next item on the programme was the performances from the Music Fiesta participants of which we had two groups of children to perform. The following pic shows Wilson with the first group

and here again with the second group.

The lighting in a "bioskop" is not very camera friendly as you can see that some of these pics are quite dark. Anyway, after Probolinggo it will be back to Jakarta for the next few days.

Music Fiesta with Cadenza Music, Surabaya

Dateline Saturday 15 November 2008

The Music Fiesta and MPA started with the MPA children taking centre stage first with their performances from the Piano Lesson Made Easy and Step by Step series first. Then it was followed very closely with the children from the Music Fiesta, as there was a limited time availble for us. This is a pic of one of the participants who performed for the Music Fiesta receiving some very valuable tips from Wilson.

After all the children performed their pieces and received their very important tips and encouragement from Wilson, they were presented with their follow-up books for the MPA and certificates of participation for the Music Fiesta participants.



This is the second batch of students that Cadenza Musik had prepared to perform for us on that afternoon.

And finally, these are the people who went against all odds to make this even happen in Surabaya where everything is centered around competition. Everyone in Surabays says that if you are not doing it in a competition style, you will not get any participation coz everyone wants a competition. Well, Cadenza Musik has proven these critics wrong and our congratulations and thanks goes to them.


After we finished Surabaya, it was straight to the waiting Kijang and another 2 hours drive to another small town called Probolinggo about 90 kilometers away.