At
a time when the Symphony Orchestra gears up to give another one of its
performances, the time seems apt to talk about a very young, very talented
player sitting with the first violins, holding the instrument like any adult
professional would, confident and very much at ease with the music and the art
of playing.
Thushani Jayawardena is probably the youngest player in the recent past of the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka to be playing the first violin. When she auditioned for the Orchestra at the age of twelve, she gained immediate admittance to that section which demands a very high standard of playing.
Born in 1984, Thushani grew up in an environment of music, since her father, Asoka Jayawardena, is also a violinist, playing in the Symphony Orchestra as well as the orchestra of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. As a little girl Thushani’s liking for the violin was obvious. Her parents bought her an instrument and the little girl has been finding her way through the world of music since then.
She was fortunate that her father had a friend, who, at the time she was getting used to holding the violin, was pursuing his higher studies in a conservatory in Russia. When Ananda Dabare came to Sri Lanka during the holidays he realized that the little daughter of his friend had great potential to become an exceptional player.
"She has the capacity within her soul to understand music. She feels music. For me that is the most important thing. Many have the ability to just play the notes well. I do not think that is enough," says Ananda.
He taught her during the holidays and her father looked after her progress, till Ananda returned to take over the musical education of the child completely.
Ananda, one of the best Western violinists in Sri Lanka now, has his own ideas about the teaching of music, from which Thushani has no doubt benefited.
"In skill, I think a teacher gives only a part of the education. Almost half of the learning comes throughout the personality or the soul that the teacher exposes the student to in the process of learning music," he says.
Thushani’s enthusiasm is admitted by her violin tutor and her teacher of piano and the theory of music, Menaka de Fonseka. It was much later that the girl took to the other instrument and the learning of the theoretical side of music.
"But her picking up of everything that was taught her was amazingly quick. She did Grade Five theory straight away, and though we had to start from scratch, she was able to learn and do the exam, in about four months. She got very high marks too," says Menaka and adds, "She was only ten years old then."
Even in learning the piano she has shown what hard work and determination together with a latent talent can do. At first when she did not have a piano at home to practice she had gone to a neighbour. "And she got the highest marks in all of Sri Lanka that year, despite the fact that I had started her on the Grade 2 exam straightaway," her teacher says.
In her music exams, she had received the Special Award given for Strings, at the Royal School of Music from Grades 6 to 8. Also, she got the highest marks in Sri Lanka for violin in Grades 3, 5 and 7.
Thushani is an exceptionally good student even in her school work. At first, studying at the Kolonnawa Balika Vidyalaya. she got admittance to Visakha Viyalaya, after scoring 180/200 in the scholarship exam. She shows a partiality to science subjects and says that she might consider becoming a doctor if she has to choose a career other than music.
"But I would always prefer to have a career in music if it is possible. For that I will have to go to a good music school abroad and study. If that becomes possible, perhaps I can consider it." she says.
As her teacher Ananda points out, talented young people like this deserve help. This is a country where much help is available, considering how much sportsmen and women and various other professionals get a helping hand. "There are many young people who are talented in this country. But I cannot help them all, it is humanly impossible. But I wish I could and hope that there will be someone who is willing to identify them and help them pursue their calling."
Perhaps it is time we thought of how the country can help the young people, who with a little bit of timely help can become cultural ambassadors of this country. There is much to be done, much to be offered. Perhaps it is just some coordination that is necessary.
For the moment, the charmingly unaffected Thushani goes about her work, studying as hard as she can and playing music at every opportunity she gets.
She had a chance to appear as a soloist at the Symphony Orchestra of Colombo earlier this year, playing the Bach Violin Concerto in A Minor. The concert was conducted by her own teacher Ananda.
At that April concert, the crowd at the Navarangahala tensed up when the strapping conductor followed the small figure in a frilly frock on to the stage. They knew that what they would see had to be exceptional; otherwise that small girl would not have been there.
And it was exceptional. The confidence Thushani exuded was almost palpable. When, after the first brave notes, a string gave way, the audience was perhaps more on edge than the player herself. What would such an experience do to a young player, who was attempting this difficult work in its entirety by memory?
In fact it did nothing to fluster her. With true professionalism, she sailed through the work with skill and with grace, proving to the world that there was indeed a great violinist in the making.
It cannot be said that I am a reader of poetry as a rule but an exception is always made whenever I see Manel Abhayaratna in print yet again. Well known for both her prose and verse, her latest publication ‘Images" is a worthy successor to other books which readers will well remember. I speak of "Maya", "Shadows", "Letters to a Daughter’ etc.
Let me begin by mentioning my favourities in this current book containing about 45 to 50 superbly crafted poems. Perhaps those which have a strong religious flavour will appeal to readers as they did to me. Manel is truly a child of Sri Lanka. "Remembering Mary Magdalene" and "Vesak" convey attitudes and beliefs of Christians and Buddhists in the gentle and non-combative manner of a true poet.
"You a man - yet divine
I, a woman, longing........ but you deny my need.
That is not the love I seek."
She writes movingly of the biblical harlot touched by a love she cannot understand or handle.
And on Vesak...........
"Lose in your limitless Compassion - Myself".
Perhaps I am most moved when Manel writes of her grandson - the Golden Boy of other books. Every grandmother will empathize with her feelings, dream her dreams, hope her hopes and have the same fears. Do we not all want to?
"Catch a star in my hand
Wrap it round my dreams
And send it back to the skies
For you - my Golden Boy?"
Nationalistic hopes and fears are given tongue in "Independence 1993" and "Child of my Child". What sort of world are we leaving our beloved grandson? "Your heritage I leave you child," she writes at one time but later on she agonises over a land riven by civil war, "Women watch with anxious longing. The return of the maimed and broken soldier".
Her Golden Boy, a child of the times, questions his grandmother in puzzlement. She replies,
"Why do you sing strange child of this day
and ask of me "Are we really free?"
Nor is Manel above a little satire on the side. Materialistic values get a sharp rap,
"Middle class morality confines your needs...
Forget the money of a love that fears
And say ‘goodbye’" she tells the ambitious and self seeking.
Manel Abhayaratna is too well known to need any panegyrics from me, nontheless it must be said the IMAGES contains some of her best work. I have read it through twice and at each reading I detect a nuance of feeling, a hint of emotion, a touch of sorrow that I missed the first time. Thus should IMAGES be read. It is cool, elegant language at its best and I am left with the wistful wish -"Why couldn’t I have said it that way myself."
-Goolbai Gunasekera
'Dance
Reflections’, an evening of Dance and Music with Alison Rosemary Kock
Bandaranaike and Sujeeva Hapugalle, will be held on September 2 and 3 at the
Lionel Wendt Theatre. Choreography is by Waidyawathie Rajapakse and the show is
organised by the German Cultural Institute.
Alison Rosemary Kock, concert pianist and piano-teacher at the University of Cologne, grew up in Cambridge, England, as the daughter of Michael Dias-Bandaranaike (the elder brother of Felix Dias Bandaranaike) and her Scottish mother, Norah Hunter Crabb. From a very early age she was conscious of the Eastern and Western facets of her personality but it has been the 25 years in Germany that has helped her, as she says, to view them objectively. Her partner and choreographer, Waidyawathie Rajapakse, grew up in the small village of Amunugama, near Kandy, as the daughter of the famous Suramba, who won international acclaim.
This project initiated by Alison Kock Bandaranaike (Cologne) with its fusion of European avantgarde music and Sri Lankan dance-forms, could be an excellent example of a ‘dialogue between cultures’. The experimental program aims at more than merely bridging the gap between Eastern and Western art-forms. It also attempts to make accessible possible deep similarities between the body-language of South-Asian Dance and the rhythmic formulae of the European composers Andre Jolivet and Claude Debussy.
"The central work ofthe evening will be a danced version of the Cinq Danses Rituelles’ (Five Ritual Dances) by Andre Jolivet. These were written in 1939 and represent the fruits of his exhaustive study of so- called ‘primitive’ ritual music with its magical and mystic qualities. Avantgarde music of this century and yet, at the same time, convincingly archaic, it seems to awaken universal archetypes within us as we celebrate the ‘Initiation Dance’, the ‘Hero’s Dance’, the ‘Wedding Dance’, ‘the Dance of the Abduction’ and the ‘Funeral Rites’. The music seems predestined to be danced to and the perfect fusion with Sri Lankan ritual dance-forms comes about because both express the same content and somewhere, at a deep, non-verbal level we recognise it.
"It was my good fortune to have had the opportunity of studying Kandyan Dance for several years in Germany and Sri Lanka, otherwise I would never have grasped the inner, ritual content of the music" says Alison Kock.
"I suddenly had a strong impression of a ‘Pooja’ while practising the ‘Funeral Rites’ and realised that Jolivet had composed rhythmic structures very similar to Kandyan Dance".
While Jolivet’s music is ritual and abstract, Debussy’s ‘Six Epigraphes Antiques’ (Six ancient Epigraphes), to which the second half of the programme is devoted, are more scenic. All the pieces are inspired by archaic, mythical themes.
Originally for orchestra, he transcribed the work for piano-duet in 1904. He, also, was strongly influenced by oriental and South Sea music, and uses appropriate tonal modes and rhythms to create these vivid impressions.
God spoke, Shiva danced, and the Cosmos was created. So the ancient creation myths tell us. Sound is Energy. The vibrations from energy - sound, heard and unheard, cause vibrations that incite movement - and movement creates the returning orders of all life.
Music, or organised sound, ranks the highest in the world’s oldest living cultural traditions, and it is often identified with Light as symbolic of explicit knowledge.
Lao tzu and Confucius in China, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Pythagoras, and Bharata, the matchless sage of ancient India, believed that the music of the world sounded in two forms: one through the mathematics of sound and cosmic calculations, also as a system of values, and as an expression of the human condition: the other, containing the mystical element of music, comprised the celestial cosmic harmonia, the harmony of the spheres.
This harmony was believed to have been ordered by vibrations caused by the revolutions of the planets and cyclic rhythms, of the ceaseless creative process of nature.
Music may have a private meaning for each person, but it can also unite the most diverse societies in a shared experience beyond the power of words. It was this unity of response and understanding, this shared experience of musical knowledge, that Surya Sena, famed musicologist, singer and teacher, worked for ceaselessly.
He tried through teaching, performance and witness, both at home and in several countries of the world, to listen and learn through music what was culturally new and unfamiliar.
Surya Sena, the younger son of the illustrious Sir James Peiris and Lady Peiris, belonged to a cultured, wealthy and anglicized family. He was educated in England, and studied music at the Royal College of Music; read law at Oxford and was called to the bar.
He married a musician, the daughter of an eminent Sri Lankan physician, who had also had her entire education in Belgium.
Surya and Nelun Sena on their return to the island, began a long and deep inquiry into the music of South Asia, and particularly of Sri Lanka.
As they travelled the island, they heard, probably for the first time, the songs of the earth that was theirs.
The devotional songs, the sacred chants, the haunting village lullabies, and the folk songs and rhythms became part of a new adventure of discovery and learning.
There is a strangely compelling power in music that is not structured but expressed: sounds that do not answer the head but the heart need neither explanation nor reference.
The vannams, or sung poetry of lion, elephant, horse, hare, cobra, monkey and hawk, are part of the earth and sky of this land; and the flutes and drums of the villagers, and the long sad chants of the Veddahs, return with reminding presence.
Surya and Nelun Sena, listening and learning, discovered the primitive wonder of indigenous music; the simple brooding songs of farmer, fisherman, carter and blacksmith - the folk music that accompanies hardship.
Here, the dreams and hopes of a people were offered, the myths retold, the rituals and ceremonies described, the sacred stories enacted, and the beliefs confessed. Surya Sena expressed anew the emotions of love, joy, anger and grief expressed in song and dance and in the chanted poetry and silence of his people, and these became his own. And he pledged to use his gifts to make this knowledge as widely known as possible. Surya Sena used his wealth and experience to set up a Trust for the furtherance of education, music and art.
He gifted his gracious home in Colombo 3 with its valuable effects to become what is known as the Surya Sena Centre.
Today, the Centre administered by his niece Chloe de Soysa and a group of enthusiasts, sponsors a variety of learning opportunities, to discover the mysterious and the not so mysterious values and elements in these expressions known as music and art.
The music of East and West is vastly different; and so it should be. We have terms, labels, categories and buzz words for creative expression. But to really know music wherever it comes from, one has to accept and enjoy it on its own terms.
Each lecture and song recital of Surya Sena was a learning experience for his various audiences both at home and abroad. And the vast research he made, and the knowledge he acquired of the musical tradition of his people, are both valuable and inspiring. He composed, using the ideas and themes of Sri Lankan folk music; he sang and spoke, believing in what he was doing.
In the music of the spheres, in a music that is original, eternal and holy, there is often a silence; a time of recall and remembrance.
Today, interest in the music of other peoples and other cultures has never been greater.
In order to understand this fully, one has to know one’s own native music in its original and most profound expression.
And this Surya Sena succeeded in doing.
The Deva Surya Sena Commemorative Concert of music and dance, by leading performers, and featuring the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka, conducted by Lalanath de Silva, takes place on Thursday 4th September, at 7.30 p.m. at the Ladies College Hall.
It will be a celebration of our own themes and melodies and promises to be an evening of delight with the added attraction of having dances performed by Khema, Ravibandu and troupe and Basil Mihiripenna and troupe.
Thursday’s concert will feature Menaka de Fonseka (Soprano) and Srimanthika Senanayake (Tenor) singing compositions of Deva Surya Sena, and it will be of great interest to Sri Lankan audiences to hear how melodies like our lullaby ‘Doyi, doyi’ comes out in the Western style of music. A repeat performance of the concert organised by Museaus College will be held on September 5 at the same venue.
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