2018: Women year…?

‘No boundaries’

By Cezary Owerkowicz

KUWAIT CITY, Jan 21: The New Year Day is already over and done with. I know that whole year will pass by sooner than expected. That’s life, but no problem. However still we try to predict what’s in store for us this year.

It is a similar question when we come for a concert of unknown composition even if we know the place, the performers, the author and performing artistes but not the tunes and harmonies. Can we expect the next edition to be of similar songs or symphony or will we be surprised by something new, maybe — unexpected?

I have neither the prophetic abilities nor the ‘women intuition’. However I would like to predict that the coming year will belong more to women. Even in the next few days the first concert, I hope, will be performed by women.

Here I would say, exactly two women from two different kinds of music and — more — even cultural spheres but I found something common between them: young, very talented, coming to light of the world from rather traditional societies but very cosmopolitan, believing that for them there are ‘No Boundaries’.

Shapia Salique is a Bangladeshi singer who in her early childhood moved with her family and grew up in London. In UK she got her first successes combining jazz with traditional Eastern music. ‘No Boundaries’ is a title of her new album. She tours the world and just recently she came back from the United States and tours Europe.

‘Of course, I had to fight many battles in my life. I am a woman from traditional society, which liked doing music but at the same not to renounce my culture. Quite often I heard — ‘Stop!’ Whereas music, it is my language,’ she says.

Shapia comes from a musical family. Her father came to Britain to study and after completing he went back to native Bangladesh to set up a family. However, soon he found that in the UK he can realize his passion better.

Owerkowicz

Connected

He also was a man strongly connected to his tradition taking care of cultivating his roots. At home there was no talk in English. Thanks, the parents of Shapia discovered and fell in love with native music. Her grandma and grandpa were famous singers and so also her father, his brother and his sons — practically the entire family was connected to music.

When she was four years old her father took her to his concert. She herself went to the stage and started humming the song from the beginning till the end. Later her father jokingly said before she started talking she had started singing.

As a child she became a member of her father’s show performing three, four or even five times on weekends. When she was 14, her father took her to Bangladesh so that she could learn her native language to read and write.

‘I completed my English school a bit later but I wouldn’t complain. Quite the opposite — if I wouldn’t know well my native language I wouldn’t understand myself well. I would be incomplete. I am a British Bangladeshi, I am lucky that I am building my identity on the base of both cultures.’

Independence

‘Finding a balance between them took some time. Music helped me a lot and growing and ‘shaping’ me in London, the most multicultural city in Europe. Everywhere I’ve met the people from different parts of the world. There is nothing more creative than meeting a person who is different than I am.

‘Then it is possible to study much, also about myself. My ensemble is such a multicultural mixture: the guitar player is semi-Italian, semiAustralian, saxophonist is British, percussionist is a Hindu, I am Bangladeshi and we understand ourselves perfectly.’

‘It is simple. The base of every understanding, every relation is a respect. Now I am working on the project created by 16 artistes from 16 countries, 16 different cultures, races, nationalities and only one thing sometimes doesn’t work — the microphones!

“I try to build the bridge between East and the West. My inspiration, a few centuries old Bangladeshi music has nothing common with jazz and funk and their instruments but from the mixture of it something unusual is born. It is not easy to translate if this spirit but if you succeed… goose-flesh!’

‘My album ‘No Boundaries’ is my Independence Declaration,’ confesses Shapia.

Concert

The same week the newly appointed Artistic Director of National Symphonic Radio & TV Orchestra, American conductor Lawrence Foster will introduce himself to the Polish audience. For the soloist of the inauguration concert he has invited an excellent young violinist Karen Gomyo.

Karen was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a French-Canadian father. Since she was two up to eleven she was growing in Montreal, Quebec, Canada until she was invited to study at the legendary Juilliard Music School in New York under famous Professor Dorothy DeLay.

Then she and her mom decamped for New York. Today she is trilingual — she speaks her native English, French and Japanese. ‘I’m asked the question a lot’, muses Gomyo. ‘Do I feel Japanese, or Canadian, or American? And when I think about it, I would say that because my childhood was spent in Canada, that’s where I feel at home.’

NB. Everything has some price, more or less, sometimes — too much. Isn’t homelessness an issue that’s often associated with successful classical musicians? She’s had 28 addresses before she was thirty and a couple of years ago she gave up on the idea of a permanent home altogether.

‘Because of my travels, a few years ago I decided that it might not be necessary to have a home base. It just seemed like a waste of money,’ she said some time ago. ‘Now I realize that your home base is worth all the money it costs, even if you’re not there much, just walking into my apartment and feeling a sense of ‘groundedness’ is really worth it,’ she said after changing her opinion. She has recently made Berlin her ‘home’.

Prodigy

She was already a renowned prodigy in her early age in Canada and because outstanding successes she was invited to the Juilliard pretended to be music school No One. However her career took off from New York. After four years at Juilliard, she beat out hundreds of other young talents in a competition of Young Concert Artists — an organization that helps young classical musicians develop their careers. When she was 15, she was the youngest musician YCA had ever accepted for management.

It is funny, but Karen was worried she was already too old: ‘When I was in Juilliard, Midori was already a big sensation, and then there were Sarah Chang and all these very young Asian violinists.

‘It was sort of fad at the time. If you weren’t a professional at 15, you’d missed the boat. It was a destructive and false mentality — and it made me feel a little behind my peers. There were kids my age making grand debut at Carnegie Hall, and I was still auditioning’.

Today she’s grateful to YCA for helping her career: ‘My first concert was a barn and my second was a barge. I wasn’t treated or presented as a prodigy. I had opportunity to grow at my own pace’.

She played already in all parts of the world and at Carnegie Hall. She started to record discs I really recommend. Her idols she admires are David Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein.

‘They were fabulous in their 20s but they became important artistes later on. I was building professional relationships when I was very young, conductors seemed very old but they’re getting younger all the time!’ she smiles.

And she is a lucky girl. You know how important for violinist is an instrument? The private sponsor impressed of her talent offered her something unbelievable: Antonio Stradivarius legendary violin called Aurora ex-Foulis done in 1703.

These days 35 years old JapaneseCanadian Gomyo presents the most famous instrument — the Italian instrument Violin Concert of British modern legend composer — Benjamin Britten. Fascinating and striking piece is recognized as one of the greatest and most difficult violin concerts.

Three contrasting parts are full of great theatrical gests, unlimited lyricism and hold your breath acrobatic technical equilibristic crowned by severe Passacaglia, seems to be from the other world.

* * * From my point of view women are growing in power and personally I am optimistic. These two brilliant ‘examples’ is the testimony of my opinion of this thesis. Ave Aurora!

Editor’s Note: Cezary Owerkowicz is the chairman of the Kuwait Chamber of Philharmonia and talented pianist. He regularly organises concerts by well-known musicians for the benefit of music lovers and to widen the knowledge of music in Kuwait. His e-mail address is: cowerkowicz @yahoo.com and cowerkowicz@hotmail.com