{"id":2506,"date":"2020-03-01T14:47:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T14:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/?p=2506"},"modified":"2020-03-01T14:48:57","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T14:48:57","slug":"a-man-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/?p=2506","title":{"rendered":"A man on fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A man on fire<\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

With a new opera by Khemadasa out this weekend, Madhubhashini Ratnayake shares her experiences of working with the maestro<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They call him Master. And the name seems \ntailor-made for him. Everything about Khemadasa is drawn in grand master\n strokes. Grand gestures. Grand ideas. Grand music. Fire would also \nbe a word that seems suitable to describe this man. It seems so right \nthen that Fire is the name of his latest opera being staged at the \nLionel Wendt at 7 p.m. today, in the 70th year of his life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is fire in his \nunquenchable passion for seeking the most intense in pure music: and it \nis making him stage one more opera even when the doctors have prescribed\n rest and relaxation for his heart, not fully recovered yet from \nsurgery. There is fire in the unconventional sounds he has yoked \ntogether in his music, a fusion of the East and the West: this synthesis\n probably being much harder then than now given the time that he did it \nearly in his career. There is fire in his life \u2013 his blatant \noutspokenness with regard to everything from art to politics having long\n made him the most unbankable artist with regard to his use for narrow \npolitical gain. Strains of Beethoven colour his music and his life: one \nwould expect him to tear up a script as Beethoven did his immortal \nEroica which he had dedicated to Napoleon, once he heard that Napoleon \nhad declared himself Emperor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n One is not surprised when Khemadasa gets a whole orchestra to get up \nand leave stage and the hall when a technician is foolhardy enough to \nsuggest that he hurry up with the tuning of the instruments; he might \nnod with sleep at official banquets held in his honour but he will be \nwide awake throughout the night of a recording; he will dine with kings \nbut will not forget to carry food himself for the musicians in any place\n they meet for fear that they may be hungry. Khemadasa lives for his \npassion for music and everything else is secondary in his life. I know \nthis because I\u2019ve been in that orchestra that was told by him to pack up\n and leave; I\u2019ve listened to him laughing at himself for falling asleep \u2013\n he laughs at himself and at everyone else often – during speeches or \nwearing mismatching shoes to banquets held in his honour; I\u2019ve eaten \nthe food he had carried; I\u2019ve been in the car packed with other \nmusicians which he drove precariously on the road over pavements and on \nthe wrong side of roundabouts to get to a concert on time; I\u2019ve played \nthe violin with the audience sitting at my feet when the hall didn\u2019t \nhave enough seating capacity to contain all the people but they battered\n upon the gate and came anyway and sat on the floor to see the newest \nplay he had composed music to. So my idealizing of this musician is not \nthe product of imagination. It is a result of experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who trained under \nhim, like Indrachapa Bulathsinhala are now singing professionally in \noperas in Austria, or making a name for themselves in Sri Lanka like \nIndika Upamali or Samantha Perera. The voice training and the training \nin musicianship that they received under him have given them enough \npower to proceed further in the careers they have chosen. And he still \ntrains people from far away places of Sri Lanka in his school \u2013 and just\n after one year of training, they sing with more confidence and ease \nthan many professionals who now more often than not succumb to the \nunfortunate habit of lip synching upon the stage to previously recorded \nmusic. Live performances would have been under threat of dying out if a\n few musicians like Khemadasa, had not believed music, unless on CD or \ncassette, or used as background music to dance, has to be performed on \nstage. I remember the sense of surreal horror felt when I realized at \none recent concert staged by people connected to an aesthetic \nuniversity, that they were lip synching to a CD. One might expect that \nat a pop music concert, but not at a classical music one. If our \nuniversities do not realize that performance of music is not just \nlooking pretty on stage, then there is real trouble ahead for the fine \narts scene in Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At rehearsals of Agni I \nheard voices of young girls and boys who moved effortlessly on stage and\n could sing faultlessly and with no loss of breath as they sang. \u201cThe \npoint is that the movements they make are part of the voice production. \n How they move is integral to how the voice is produced so that there is\n no effort for the movement involved. Normally the body produces the \nvoice, but in singing, the voice controls the body,\u201d explained \nKhemadasa. It also makes sense then that the choreographer for the \nopera is also the composer \u2013 the body in its movements and in its voice \nproduction is one unified whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n The libretto for Agni is written by well known poet Eric \nIlliyapparachchi. Based on the legend of Prometheus, the plot deals \nwith how fire was got by man, and has as the main characters a hunter, a\n human who initiates the search for fire and the sister of Prometheus \nwho brings it to the world. A live orchestra with musicians of the \ncalibre of Lakshman Joseph de Saram on violin, will back the singers. \nThe main characters are played by well-known personalities in the world \nof art, actor Kamal Addararachchi who is making a debut as a vocalist on\n stage and Indika Upamali whose training with the Master has made her \none of the foremost singers of the day. Apart from Krishan who acts as \nPrometheus, whose esperience in the choir at Trinity has given him a \nbase in vocal training, the others are from the Khemadasa school of \nmusic, and what has been achieved with raw talent from our villagers is \nindeed breathtaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khemadasa\u2019s service to Sri \nLanka is manifold, but chief among them, I feel, is what he does to \ntrain the younger generation of this country in his art. The sincerity \nof his commitment is apparent in what he produces, and this weekend\u2019s \nshow would be a testament to that. Year by year students pass through \nhis hands and to the question as to what happens to them afterwards, \nKhemadasa has no answer \u2013 except express his sorrow at the state of this\n country which makes it near impossible for people to survive in the \nfield of serious art \u2013 for the chances of production are so slim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He himself struggles so \nhard to get a show together \u2013 often doing everything that should have \nbeen left to manual labourers, himself. Given his service to the \ncountry, given his greatness as an artist, given his importance to the \nimage of Sri Lanka as a whole, one wishes that there was a better way \nthat the country has of saying thank you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lately, Khemadasa had been \nfeted often \u2013 awards and felicitations have come his way. But perhaps \nthe best recognition – gift in fact – that an artist of this calibre \nshould get is a steady, continuous method of getting his work out to the\n people. Only those in the art field would know what a lot of effort it\n takes to get sponsorship of a concert that does not cater to the \npopular market, out to the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One actually has to beg the\n private companies for sponsorship \u2013 there is no other less violent word\n for it. An artist like Khemadasa, like some others, does not deserve \nto be made to beg. If the private sector does not want to get involved,\n perhaps the government could step in to give him a grant even once a \nyear, so that he can put on a performance with no other thought than \nmusic in his mind. As a country, we owe him that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for those who love him,\n perhaps our contribution would be to go and see his work. Not in any \nway because of a sense of compassion, but because it is still very good \nart and because it gives us the sense that not in everything is there a \ndrop in standards. There are people who are swimming against the tide. \n Agni is sponsored by the Student Association of the University of \nKelaniya and we cannot be anything but grateful that at least students \nhave come forward to do something that people in greater positions of \npower than they, had not done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka is blessed with world class artists who are yet producing despite everything \u2013 and this is a time when we are in sore need of feeling blessed. Dr. Lester James Pieris in his eighties, released his latest film this year and Dr. Premasiri Khemadasa\u2019s newest work is coming out this weekend. What joy there is in being able to end on such a note of hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.sundaytimes.lk\/070527\/Plus\/pls16.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man on fire With a new opera by Khemadasa out this weekend, Madhubhashini Ratnayake shares her experiences of working with the maestro They call him Master. And the name seems tailor-made for him. Everything about Khemadasa is drawn in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2508,"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions\/2508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/premasirikhemadasa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}