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 Appreciation with Interlude

09 September 2007

I know I am behind in my time but it's not my fault coz' I just received these photos and I would like to share them with you.

One thing I would like to say about Indonesians. They take their photos really seriously. Just have a look at the following pic. You can see that all their pics are labelled very carefully.

Ok, the lady next to me is not a student but a teacher and incidentally she was also my translator. And I must say, she did a very good job of translating and keeping up with me, considering the fact that sometimes people say that I talk too much and too fast....... remember?? "The Fast and Furious" ....

Talk about some exercise to get the blood going again. Well, this is not a therapy session but since there were parents around, so why not have some fun, since music was not supposed to be boring and dull. At least we managed to let parents feel that music is also about rhythm and I mean the body movement type...... and not the Rhythm MP kind of rhythm.

If you noticed by now, there are some paintings on the wall. Well this building was actually rented by Sidhi Olik and Lana (Sidhi's wife) and it is a sort of art display and the paintings are all painted by local artists. Incidentally, the paintings are also for sale. That is why the photo looks like an art auction.......

And here is the rest of the gang. These are the teachers from Interlude. That's me (third from the right, if you are facing the photo). Do you know which is the guitar teacher? No, not the blue shirt one but actually the brown checked shirt (third from the left). Everyone always thinks he's the guitar teacher. Is it the hair????

Music Appreciation in EduArt, Indonesia

Very often, children and parents will find themselves in a situation where they do not understand the full benefits of what music education cna provide their children or how this education is to be used. At Rhythm MP, we have always believed that music is to be enjoyed and appreciated and thus we always strive to provide the right information to parents and their children on the benefits of music education wherever they may be.

This was one of my earlier visits to Indonesia where Rhythm MP was working with one of our music outlets, EduArt.

EduArt is located at this township called Kelapa Gading. Incidentally, Kelapa Gading is also a shopping haven for shopaholics with malls like Artha Gading, Kelapa Gading Mall and recently Kelapa Gading Square (if I am not mistaken) and these malls ARE HUGE!!!!!