Somtow moved to the United States, took up American citizenship and became an author of science fiction, fantasy and horror novels, in English.

By Peter Janssen

Somtow Sucharitkul, an award-winning novelist and musical composer/conductor, once turned his back on his motherland, Thailand. In the late 1970s, after returning to Thailand from Britain where he had been schooled at Eaton and Cambridge, Somtow jumped into pioneering a fusion of Thai-Western instrumental melodies that he and some friends hoped would “revolutionise” Thailand’s music scene.
 “It was very unpopular and everybody hated us,” Somtow, 60, recalled. “My reaction was to give up music.”
Somtow moved to the United States, took up American citizenship and became an author of science fiction, fantasy and horror novels, in English. His prolific output of more than 30 novels included such diverse titles as The Aquiliad, Vampire Junction, Moon Dance, The Other City of Angels, Anna and the Ripper of Siam (unofficially banned in Thailand) and Jasmine Nights (semi-autobiographical).
They won him numerous American accolades, including the John W Campbell Award for the Best New Writer, the Locus Award and the World Fantasy Award. But Thailand and his first love for music eventually beckoned.
 “I suddenly had a vision that I should enter a monastery,” Somtow said. He returned to Thailand in 2011 and became a Buddhist novice for a stint of fasting and meditation that was interrupted by the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
His response was to write a requiem which was performed by Thailand’s Mahidol University Music School orchestra in 2002.
A job as the school’s resident composer fell through, due to professional jealousies, according to Somtow, but he stayed on in Thailand to launch the Bangkok Opera, the Siam Philharmonic Orchestra and in 2009 the Siam Sinfonietta youth orchestra.
Founded to provide a professional opening for talented young Thai musicians, Siam Sinfonietta has been attracting attention abroad.
The orchestra won first prize in the Summa Cum Laude Festival, Vienna, in 2012, for its rendition of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony, and recently a Gold Award at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Disney Hall, for performances of Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije and portions of Somtow’s latest bal-opera (ballet and opera), Suriyothai, which is based on the military exploits of a legendary Thai Queen.
It will compete again in the upcoming Young Euro Classical Festival in Berlin on July 29, and is booked for a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York next year.
Somtow shrugs off barbs from his Thai critics that his youth orchestra is getting recognition only because of its exotic Asian origins.
 “In Austria they won first prize not because they are a group of performing monkeys, but because they actually played this music better than the Austrians,” he said.
In training his young orchestra he uses the ‘Somtow method’ of complete immersion in the culture, history and personal experiences of the composer.
For instance, before the Vienna performance, Somtow took his orchestra to Mahler’s home town of Kalischt, Czech Republic, to visit a nearby forest to experience the “naturlaut” (nature) first hand.
They also performed in small Czech churches and inns “to absorb the essence of what the music was about.”
 “Somtow has the talent and ability to inspire young musicians with a dedication and willingness to work hard,” said Steven van Beek, a trained classical musician and Bangkok-based author of numerous books on Thailand. “You can often judge an orchestra by the way it’s watching the conductor and with Somtow they are riveted,” he said.
Nath Khamnark, the 2nd trombonist in the Sinfonietta, acknowledged that Somtow’s multi-accomplishments as a novelist, a filmmaker, and a composer/conductor had made him “my idol.”
 “Under his baton I feel like everything is fresh and alive,” Nath said. “It’s like everyone is making a painting together.”
Importantly for Somtow, his performances are also beginning to be appreciated more by Bangkok audiences as well. “For the first time, the theatres and concert halls are completely filled with people who have never been exposed to these and are genuinely emotionally affected by them,” Somtow said of his recent performance of The Silent Prince.  “I certainly feel appreciated now,” he said. “That’s why I’m still here.”
Somtow’s Bangkok Opera Foundation has been receiving government funding since 2009, after years of being excluded from state subsidies.
Despite his busy music schedule, Somtow has not abandoned his second outlet for creativity, writing novels. He is currently working on a trilogy called The Dragon’s Stones, about an “an avatar of Vishnu,” in which the Hindu God is born on earth in a Catholic orphanage in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum.
 “In some ways the most satisfying thing in the world is to sit in a room a create something,” Somtow said of his dual career.
 “When it’s a book you send it off to a publisher and someone else the deals with it, but when it’s music, after it’s written you have to deal with performing it and that’s when other people, sometimes hundreds, become involved,” Somtow said. — DPA



Lifelong role suits
Mother Dolores Hart

By Susan King


Dolores Hart was one of Hollywood’s top ingenues, teaming up with Elvis Presley in 1957’s Loving You and then reuniting with him a year later in King Creole. She worked with such legends as Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani in 1957’s Wild Is the Wind and Robert Ryan and Montgomery Clift in 1958’s Lonelyhearts, then earned a Tony Award nomination in 1959 for her first play, the romantic comedy The Pleasure of His Company.
A devout Catholic since the age of 10, she broke off her engagement to Don Robinson in 1963 and entered the cloistered Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, where as Mother Dolores Hart she has led a life of contemplation and hospitality. She has become a mother prioress and the abbey is flourishing, with a professional theatre group performing in the summer, internships and several new postulants.
Now Mother Dolores is somewhat of a public figure again. Last year, she attended the Academy Awards when the HBO documentary, which chronicled the day-to-day life of the nuns in the abbey, was a nominee, and she is just finishing the first leg of a book tour for her autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, which she wrote with her longtime friend, Richard DeNeut.
Relaxing in a lounge at a convent in Culver City, California, Mother Dolores, 74, is friendly and a bit of a character. A Mac aficionado, she keeps her iPhone in the pocket of her habit and her digital camera handy, snapping photographs of everyone she meets so she can share them with members of the abbey. Excerpts …

You played the daughter of the legendary Italian actress Anna Magnani in Wild Is the Wind, but you got off to a rough start.
She took one look at me and said (to director George Cukor), “She is too naive and American with blue eyes and blonde hair. She is supposed to be my daughter.” George said, “We will dye her hair and have dark makeup put on her. She will know the scene in Italian by 2pm.” I said, “George!”
He got a lady that coached Anna (to teach me Italian). She came into the dressing room and said, “This is the scene; repeat after me.” I never forgot those lines.
We got on very well because the next day after she saw the rushes, Anna came over and grabbed both of my ears and shook me like I was a puppy dog. George assured me that it was a sign of affection.

You didn’t have an easy time for several years at the abbey dealing with the cloistered life, and some of the nuns didn’t take you seriously because you had been an actress.
It was earth-shaking in a way because I really didn’t have much of an idea of what I was getting into. I didn’t know I was going to sing the Office (certain psalms, prayers, hymns and biblical readings to be recited at fixed hours) six times a day and once in the middle of the night in Latin. That didn’t occur to me that was part of the deal.

You mean they never told you?
I probably was told, but I don’t think I understood what it meant. I mean, to sing with the same person next to you every day, especially if you don’t get voices that work too well together!

A lot of your fellow postulants didn’t make it during those first three years. Was it your faith that got you through those early years?
I think that part of it was my nature, which is always ready to take on the hardest thing and do it. It is much more fun to go through something that’s demanding than just be a (wimp).

One of your earliest adversaries, Mother David, became one of your best friends.
She was one of my first, should I say, nemeses. We had these little white collars that we wore as postulants. I said one day, “Can you tell me, is my collar on right?” She said, “Nobody cares what you look like in here, dearie. So don’t worry about your collar.” But in the long run she became the one person who helped more than anyone. — Los Angeles Times/MCT