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ALAN COCHRANE TIMES & TRANSCRIPT
Violinist Adrian Anantawan has performed in concert halls around the world, at the Olympic Games and had a slightly embarrassing encounter with U.S. President Barack Obama.
“When I think about all these moments, I owe them to music. Music can take you places where you don’t expect it to,” Anantawan said in an interview Tuesday.
He was in Moncton to meet with young musicians in the Sistema NB program,which gives school-age children an opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument in an orchestral setting. During his visit,Anantawan showed children the well-worn road case that protects his prized French violin as he travels around the world.
Anantawan, 32, was born into a musical family in Toronto and without a right hand. By the age of nine, he was playing the violin, using a prosthetic clamp to hold the end of the bow.
“I didn’t have to learn how to hold the bow, I had a device to hold the bow for me,”he laughs.
He believes he had a natural ability to play and progressed quickly. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and earned a masters degree from Yale University. Since graduating, he has performed around the world, including at the White House and the Olympic Games in Athens, and has been nominated for a Juno Award.
He is also a national spokesman for the War Amps and an advocate for greater inclusion in the arts.During his visit with the young Sistema musicians, he played simple scales and talked to them about doing the best with what you have.
Anantawan said his disability gave him trouble early in life but he pressed onward, driven to succeed. He said his parents,who came from Thailand and Hong Kong, felt it was essential for him and his brothers to have opportunities to do their best in life.
He said he has had many memorable moments in his career, but one of his favourites was a face-to-face prayer with the Dalai Lama.
“That was a big moment to me. Our heads were touching and he said something in a language that I didn’t understand, but it was overwhelming to be in his presence and have that moment of connection.”
He also recalls a rather embarrassing moment while playing at the White House in Washington.
“I was about to start playing a piece of music and I heard a cell phone go off,” he said.“I thought it was really rude that some person did not turn their phone off and I was looking around the room to see who it was, and then it turned out it was my own cell phone in my jacket pocket.”
President Obama’s response?
“He said ‘Answer it!’”
Anantawan said if he couldn’t be a violinist,he’d probably be a teacher because he loves working with children and telling them to keep pushing forward despite adversity.
“Your quality of life and music is dependent on your ability to understand struggle and failure and how you remain resilient despite those things,” he said. “Failure is not an end but a beginning. I always think that the word ‘fail’ stands for ‘First Attempt In Learning’.
“I really do believe that the mistakes we make in life are for a purpose, and no matter what you are struggling with in life, as long as you have this passion of wanting to be a better person or connect to other people, you will eventually succeed in whatever you want to do.”
Anantawan said he wants to continue playing with passion and working with children, helping them find opportunities to shine. But he said opportunities must be accompanied by the desire to improve yourself.
“I was naturally placed in a position growing up with a difference and a struggle with a disability,” he said.“So you almost by default have to believe in something more of yourself and have a vision that you drive towards in an almost relentless way. I think just getting through childhood and growing up has allowed me to bring those lessons to other things I do in my daily life.”
Ken MacLeod, president and CEO of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra and director of the Sistema program, said Anantawan is just the type of inspirational role model that children need. He said the main goal of the Sistema program is to provide opportunities for children to learn how to play an instrument in a co-operative team environment, helping them connect the dots between their own hard work and the achievement that comes with it.
Sistema NB now has eight centres in communities across the province with more than 700 children involved, employing 60 people. MacLeod said Sistema plans to have 10 centres by 2018 with 1,200 children and 62 professional artists on staff.
