A New World

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A New World

A new world has opened up for BBJ tuba player Lasnointer Marbun after a businessman offered to sponsor him to study music at Singapore's prestigious Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

A new world has opened up for BBJ tuba player Lasnointer Marbun (aka Noin) after a bu

sinessman offered to sponsor him to study music at Singapore's prestigious Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. The businessman, who only wants to be known as Mr Ong, was responding to an article that appeared in Singapore's Straits Times newspaper on Dec. 25, 2010.

All that is left now is for Noin to pass an audition with NAFA and the compulsory English proficiency examination later this year.Below is the text of the newspaper report that changed Noin's life.

All I want for Christmas is ... to study at NAFA
by Tan Hui Yee

A passion to make music is proving to be a relentless and at times disheartening slog for Mr Lasnointer Marbun from Sumatra.

Home is a 4m by 3m room shared with a friend in between gigs at a downtown Medan cafe, with any earnings he can make zealously squirrelled away. Noin, as he is known to friends, lives, breathes and dreams the tuba - and he has set his heart on studying at Singapore's Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Nafa) to take his talent to a new level. After all, as he explains: 'The quality of brass music in Medan is not very good.'

But the odds are heavily stacked against him, as he is all too aware. A music diploma course at Nafa costs $17,000 a year for non-Singaporeans. Noin scrapes together 800,000 rupiah (S$115) a month and has saved only five million rupiah, despite refraining from buying coveted items like a computer which would make writing music much easier.

The 22-year-old plans to attend the Nafa audition early next year. Foreigners make up 40 per cent of Nafa's student population, but the college gave financial awards or assistance to just 18 per cent of its best international music diploma students this year.

But those statistics do not deter Noin, who has already overcome great odds. The 10th child of impoverished Batak farmers from Aek Nauli village near Lake Toba grew up in the Salvation Army's William Booth Home for Boys in Medan because his parents could not afford to raise him.
He missed home and ran away when he was 12, selling his pet chicken to raise money for the fare back to his village. His aghast parents sent him back to the home.

After that, Noin found solace in the tuba, which he picked up at the age of 10 while playing for the boys' home's brass band. Four years ago, after finishing high school and leaving the boys' home, he stumbled upon a magazine with an advertisement about Nafa. It sparked something in him and from that moment, Noin resolved to go to the academy and earn one of its well-regarded diplomas for brass musicians.

So much for dreams. Just earning his keep was hard enough. He drifted from job to job - as a computer laboratory assistant, fruit packer, and then kitchen assistant - before landing a gig playing music at the downtown Medan cafe from 7pm to 8.30pm on Tuesdays. On some Saturdays, he makes extra cash by playing with a brass band in Medan's HKBP Nommensen University.
'

It's been quite tough so far. The place where I live is not very secure. I have lost a pair of shoes, a jacket and my mobile phone,' he says.
'But music is everything to me. It is my life and my wife. It fulfils me and lifts my spirits. I don't want to lose it.'

To achieve his Nafa goal, he runs his life in a military-style regimen. A typical day starts at 7.30am with four hours of tuba practice, followed by two hours teaching brass music to his juniors at the boys' home. He also takes English lessons and music theory lessons, which he juggles with work. He studies on his own for a further two hours before he hits the sack at 1am. To improve his English, he listens to songs and reads as many online articles as he can at Internet cafes. But he laments that 'I do not have friends whom I can speak English with'.

Noin counts as his idol Norwegian solo tuba maestro Oystein Baadsvik, and wants to be a music composer and band master one day.
'My dream is to make brass band music popular in Indonesia. I hope to create some kind of competition between bands so that they have a chance to improve their performance.'

He is talented, say his teachers. His Sunday School teacher, Mr Daneis Karosakali, 34, remembers him as a boy who 'could play all the pieces that all the other kids couldn't'. In August, he was the first Indonesian to achieve a distinction in the Grade 5 brass practical examination held by the London-based Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. According to the exam report, Noin was 'dynamically aware' and played with 'an assured sense of shape and line'.

Whether or not the focused young man will get a Nafa scholarship remains to be seen, but Major Winfred Dalentang, who runs the boys' home, says Noin will inspire the rest of its residents to chase their dreams. 'His fellow villagers will see him as another (Barack) Obama, one of them who has succeeded,' he says, referring to the American President who grew up in Indonesia.

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When Joe Darion wrote the lyrics to the famous melody written by Mitch Leigh for the 1965 hit musical Man of La Mancha, I don't suppose he spent much time thinking about the ambitions of E flat tuba players.

Are musicians more moody and prone to suicide than other people?

Many people believe that musicians are more moody and prone to suicide than other professionals, and that - as a result - a greater percentage of them end their lives in mental institutions or are fated to live emotionally tempestuous lives. Musicians are also commonly suspected of being over sensitive to criticism, having delusions of grandeur and other neurotic traits.

The statistics fail to bear this out, although it is possible to find enough examples to make the case in front of those unfamiliar with Western musical history. Like actors, politicians and others obliged to face the public on a regular basis, musicians probably have their fair share of emotional problems. However, such problems do not constitute evidence of neuroticism.

Musicians probably have their fair share of emotional problems.

Beethoven was known for his moodiness, but this was probably closely related to his growing frustration as he began to go deaf. Among the famous composers, only Schumann and MacDowell ended up in mental institutions. Musicians probably have no more suicidal impulses than the rest of the population. But should a prominent musician decide to take his life, it is likely to get a good deal of publicity.

Perhaps the most morbid suicide was planned by the pianist Alexander Kelberine, who arranged his last concert programme to consist only of works dealing with death. He then went home and took an overdose of sleeping pills. Schumann jumped into the Rhine, only to be rescued by a fisherman. Rezso Seress composed Gloomy Sunday, a work that was once banned in Europe because it triggered a wave of suicides by young people on Sundays. Seress himself committed suicide by jumping out of a window. The vast majority of musicians, however, die of causes that reflect the state of medical knowledge in the particular historical period in which they live.

Some musicians certainly had sad lives. Mozart, perhaps the greatest of the composers in the Classical Period of music, died a pauper. The pianist Chopin, a Polish nationalist and tormented lover, was terrified of large audiences. He died of tuberculosis when he was 39. Bizet, a French composer who died when he was 36, was beset by crises of self-confidence and emotional upheaval. Unlike Chopin, his works only achieved widespread recognition after his death.

Wagner had the emotional maturity of a spoilt child.

George Gershwin only had a short life, but it was a good one. He died of a brain tumor when he was 39 after a rags to riches story that made him one of the most well known composers of popular music in the United States.

Others lived long and had much success, despite treating others abominably, including many of their friends. Wagner considered himself a genius as a playwright, poet, stage director, and philosopher as well as a composer, and was not shy about letting others know it! Although not particularly handsome, his personal magnetism was such that he had numerous affairs, usually with married women, despite the fact that he was married himself. His biographers describe him as having the emotional maturity of a spoilt child, complete with tantrums if he could not get his way. He died at the age of 70, widely acclaimed as one of the greatest composers of his time.

The pianist Franz Liszt's dashing good looks enabled him to have numerous affairs with many woman. He died of pneumonia at the age of 75. Contrast this with the fate of Schubert, who was short, fat, bespectacled and naturally shy. He died of syphilis at the age of 31 after his friends encouraged him to visit a brothel. Those who knew him well described him as having a warm and friendly nature. Somehow, it doesn't sound fair.

The life of J.S. Bach must have been very boring.

The majority of musicians now and in the past lead fairly quiet lives. Edward Elgar, a largely self-taught musician, rose from humble origins to become the first English composer in 200 years to gain international acclaim. He had a stable marriage, and was regarded by many as a typical English gentleman. He died at the age of 77. Sergei Rachmaninov, the Russian composer, also had a good life despite being out of step with his country's politics and music. He died at the age of 70.

The life of J.S. Bach must have been the most boring of all. He spent almost his entire life in the same small region of Germany where he was born. And nobody took much notice of him either. It was not until about 80 years after his death that his works attracted the attention they deserved.

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