One who is not familiar with Indonesian music, probably expects a set with pentatonic tones and traditional drums or percussions. But this is not just music from Indonesia; this is music from Indonesia composed by classical background componists. Bernadeta Astari, Ivan Garcia Artaraz, and Elwin Hendrijanto, all students from the Utrecht Music Conservatory, have shown the audience at the Theater Kikker last night, how their passionate minds and feelings on Indonesian music can deliver a World Class performance.

They played as the opening act for the SOIL ensemble, but perhaps this is just a matter of taste, I was more blown away with their performance. Of an hour concert, their set consisted of 5 compositions:

1. Senyap Dalam Derai (songs cycle composed by Ananda Sukarlan based on poems of Sapardi Djoko Damono)
2. Ritme (a composition by Elwin and Ivan, inspired by Papuan style music - you will notice the volk song Yamko Rambe Yamko in this piece)
3. Bumi Hijau (songs cycle composed by Mochtar Embut)
4. Kuda Lumping (another composition made by Elwin and Ivan, more in the Javanese style, where you will notice the volk song Ilir-Ilir in it)
5. Melati Suci (a beautiful song composed by Guruh Sukarnoputra)

Tonight’s shooting was pretty easy, the venue offers professional lighting and everything is quite straightforward. I shot manually, using ISO 1250 and set my aperture 1.4 to 2.2 and 1/80-1/100 speed.

I tried not to shoot too often; the nature of the performance left the venue very silent. Luckily I know most of the songs and I’ve been to their concert couple of times, so I could predict when to shoot.