The Diary of Anne Ku
16 July 2000 Sunday
IMPROVISING PIANO DUETS
After dimsum with the most amazing combination of individuals (entrepreneur, artist, politician), we drove off to meet the composer/pianist who had a studio in town.
Dragoncita had organised a fund-raising concert in her home. The composer had performed - attracting a houseful of people. Could I also hold a home concert in my tiny nest?
The composer's studio was one gigantic room. The ceilings were amazingly high for this area of town. Later he told us that it's a converted church. I knew a piano tuner in London who had bought an old church and converted it into a house. In some ways, it was my dream to convert an old historic building into a dwelling. Whenever I visited churches in Europe, I would often imagine making each cubicle into an apartment.
In between our conversations, we performed our own compositions for each other. Our styles were very different. Here was someone who was pursuing my dream: to be a musician full-time. I unfortunately have to work in order to play. We sightread some of the duets I had brought with me. Then he suggested that we improvise playing piano duets together.
I've never done this before. Just sit together and talk to each other on the keys. Soon we got ourselves into a rhythm of sorts. Syncopation. Chromaticism. Dissonance. Talking back and forth on the black and white keys. What great fun!
20 August 2000
I had jotted down my thoughts of the day during my travels. Now that I've FINALLY unpacked and cleaned up my room, I found these notes. So I will now "back-fill" my on-line diary.
