Helping Children in Bangkok: Music Lifts Us Up
Kjell Åge is ready to teach children from the Kristiansand School of Culture and the Immanuel Music School in Bangkok.
[ultimate_spacer height=»60″ height_on_tabs=»40″ height_on_mob=»40″]Bratsjist Kjell Åge Stoveland i Kristiansand Symfoniorkester har gått i spissen for et prosjekt der klassisk musikk kan løfte barn ut av fattigdom.
KONSENTRERTE barn setter blikket i læreren, hever buen og følger hvert minste strøk over fiolinen. De dykker inn i musikken og hengir seg, nikker til den voksne og justerer. Prøver igjen. Helt til de får det til. Hver dag, om det er mulig, kommer de til musikkskolen Immanuel Music School i hjertet av Bangkok. For noen timer er larmen fra motorveier, stanken fra søppel og klangen av håpløshet i de kummerlige forholdene de lever under fortrengt. I dag spiller noen av elevene som gikk her tidlig på 2000-tallet i anerkjente orkestre.[ultimate_spacer height=»60″ height_on_tabs=»40″ height_on_mob=»40″]
At a concert under the highway in Bangkok.
The neighborhood where the children live.
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Make a difference
“From the age of twelve, you have to pay for your own schooling in Thailand. Many of the students here have received an education through music scholarships and have fought their way out of life in the slums. All because of music,” says violist Kjell Åge Stoveland of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra. He is the initiator of the “Music Gives Life” project, which supports this school in Bangkok.
“I don’t know if I can say that I always feel as useful as a symphony musician in our affluent society,” he admits.
From Kjell Åge’s (center) concert debut at Mandal Cinema in the spring of 1983, conducted by his father (left).– I believe that culture, music, and art are an integral part of who we are as human beings, but when I sat there watching these children lose themselves in the music, knowing that it would give them the chance to rise out of poverty and lead a dignified life, I truly felt that I was making a difference.
“One of the students who received early music instruction at Immanuel Music School is now back teaching at the same school. He has simply become a celebrity in Bangkok and has received a lot of media coverage as a professional musician. In a way, the circle has been completed,” says the violist.
Childhood in Ecuador
Kjell Åge spent much of his childhood in Ecuador, where his parents worked as teachers at a Norwegian school until he was ten. When the family returned home, his father started a music school in Mandal, and Kjell Åge had already caught the bug.
“There was never any pressure to become a musician; it just came naturally and that’s how it turned out. I could just as easily have been a craftsman,” says the cheerful man from Mandal. He has established himself as a musician in Kristiansand and has been a member of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra since his student days. He now has three children of his own, all of whom love music.
– I started out playing the violin, but made a natural transition to the viola. It came very naturally to me, and I felt comfortable with the instrument’s somewhat warmer and more melancholic tone.
"I can play both guitar and piano, too," he says, and as he speaks, his hands automatically move into the position for playing the viola, the guitar, and the piano.
– We violists are, in a way, the rhythm guitarists of the band. You’d really notice if we weren’t there, but we don’t have the same prominent role as, say, the violin. Kjell Åge plays the guitar and violin with both hands.
A break from the daily grind
He was probably right; the man is a craftsman, and the craft he practices is demonstrably just as beneficial to society as if he were a bricklayer or a carpenter. And who doesn’t need a boost as a human being? Not just the children in the slums, but also children in Kristiansand who receive music instruction and guidance from many of the 70 professional, full-time musicians in the KSO, as the orchestra is increasingly referred to.
– A symphony concert transports you away from the daily grind. If you allow yourself to lose yourself in the music, you’ll be completely enveloped during the hour and a half you spend in the hall, watching and listening to us. That, after all, is our hallmark as a symphony orchestra: the physical and emotional experience of being present in the hall alongside a full orchestra.
Concerts at Kilden
My thoughts drift back to the music school in Bangkok. On Friday, August 25, six students were flown to a major concert at Kilden, where children from Thailand performed Vivaldi alongside Norwegian children.
– Virtually the entire symphony orchestra pitched in, as did the children from the arts school and the seniors in Kilden’s choir, “Sølvstrupene.” “All ticket proceeds have gone to the school project in Bangkok, and through donor support and future projects, all of this is now being transformed into hope and a future for the young people,” says Kjell Åge, letting his hands once again illustrate what he is talking about.
TEXT BY AMUND HESTSVEEN
PHOTOS BY TERJE SOLLIE AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS