BY RIA ANDRIANI, AS TOLD TO STEPHANIE ESLAKE
I was born in Bandung and grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia. My parents encouraged me to learn piano as a child – especially after I lost most of my sight at the age of 5. However, I always found singing much more fun than the prospect of practising scales for hours.
After finishing primary school, I moved back to Bandung to live with my dad, who discovered I passed fifth-grade piano exam without remembering a single piece I’d learnt. He organised Braille music lessons with an elderly blind teacher. I also joined the school choir, and still like the weekly rehearsals even as an adult. Back then, I wouldn’t have guessed where my love of singing would take me – to journey across Australia and the United Kingdom.
In 2007, I came to Sydney to live with my mum. Whilst finishing high school, I received great support from my music teacher. I became involved with annual events National Braille Music Camp, held in Mittagong each year in July; as well as the School Spectacular organised by the Arts Unit. The School Spectaculars gave me a taste of performing as part of a massive crowd – one of the most cathartic experience of my life.
During my first Braille camp, we learnt and performed Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb. I didn’t speak much English then, and had not come across many complicated pieces of music. The challenge intrigued me. Later revisiting the piece with Sydney Chamber Choir, I was reminded of the depth of feeling both poet and composer expressed through that piece – something I glimpsed as a teenager. This was around the time I discovered soprano Dame Emma Kirkby, and she became an idol of mine.
The camp encourages participants to perform for each other. It was a way to expose students to music they would not have otherwise heard. I remembered listening to a performance of The Silver Swan by Orlando Gibbons, and was quite blown away by its beauty. A decade later, I sang the piece with members of the Stile Antico during the Dartington International Summer School, where I was taking part in Dame Emma Kirkby’s vocal masterclass.
Since 2010, I became involved with the music ministry at St James King St. For me, it was the space where I learnt the finer points of choral singing as well as how music can play a role in social justice. A piece which embodies this is Joseph Twist’s How Shall We Sing in a Strange Land, which incorporates a poem by Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal called A Song of Hope. It was with great honour I performed it during the ANZAC service in Westminster Abbey during a choir tour in 2016. The song was also featured in Sydney Chamber Choir’s March performance Music on Music. I recently left St James to take up a choral scholarship at Christ Church St Laurence.
I joined Sydney Philharmonia’s youth choir Vox the day after I finished my HSC, and continued my studies of music and English literature at the University of New South Wales. During my time there, I became involved with the Collegium Musicum Choir, and aspired to join the Burgundian Consort. But at the back of my mind, I always wanted to join the Sydney Chamber Choir. To me, it was the pinnacle of choral excellence in Sydney.
I was fortunate to join in 2017 under the leadership of Richard Gill, and the then-assistant conductor Sam Allchurch.
Today, I assist Natalie Shea in taking on duties as a copywriter for SCC. My main role is to provide content for the SCC blog, providing a glimpse of the concert through an interesting point of view. I’ve interviewed choir members and friends Ed and Jane Suttil, who commissioned a new piece of music for the choir; as well as composer Elliott Gyger on Ut Queant Laxis, the piece we performed in March.
For the upcoming SCC concert A Royal Affair on 1 June, I’m writing the program notes, so the blog will be part of that. I enjoy copywriting because it allows me to see a program or a concert from different angles. As a chorister, there’s always the excitement of learning and performing the music. But a lot of the pieces we perform are very evocative, and I’m fortunate to be able to share my thoughts through writing about it.
In addition to copywriting, I have experience in translating scores into Braille. I said in an earlier interview that blindness isn’t a barrier to learning music. Yet, a lot of the time, I hear stories about musicians of all ages encountering problems during their auditions because they can’t read their score, or Braille scores are not organised in time. In the short-term, I think raising awareness of Braille music is really important. CutCommon and other publications have helped to explain how it works, and I’ve had really positive feedback [on my previous CutCommon interview] in the last week or so.
Ultimately, what I’d love to see is music and arts organisations in general implementing accessibility as part of their core values. In practical terms, establish pathways for people with disability to access opportunities on the same level as anyone else – not just for a hobby or once-in-a-year event, but up to the professional level.
For the upcoming SSC concert, I’m excited to perform a program which combines my two passions: music and poetry. I’m particularly moved by Malcolm Williamson’s piece Love, the Sentinel, which was written in memory of Fred Matthews’ death during the Electricity Strike in the UK in the early ‘70s. He was a coal worker who stood up for his rights in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and was struck by a lorrie cart that killed him. The piece was a setting of Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. and there’s a powerful link between the Victorian, the ‘70s, and now. We’re all anxious about our future. But it’s love, not hate that’ll see us through.
Check in with the Sydney Chamber Choir’s website to read Ria’s blog about the upcoming performance A Royal Affair at 7.30pm June 1 in the Great Hall, University of Sydney.
Read more about Ria’s experience transcribing Braille music in her recent interview with colleague Christina Christensen (story by Jessie Wang).
Images supplied.
