Gamelan activities to date

The ensemble has been actively updating repertoire in our “book” of tunes available for various performances and also creating new music for a collaboration with the duo Nagual for the Black Lab Performance Series held at Paragraph Gallery.

We began this process in the summer by re-introducing a composition by our teacher, I Ketút Gedé Asnawa, that was composed for the group early in his residency entitled Gita Genta Kasturi.  

This work was incorporated in an hour-long performance curated by ensemble member Shawn Hansen in collaboration with visiting artists Nagual, primarily a guitar duo, that occurred on Oct 5 at the Paragraph Gallery.  This performance also incorporated “conduction” like textures created and directed by ensemble members Sam Hughes and Wayne Yockey.  The inclusion of these improvised textures heralded a new direction in available sonic approaches for the group, since most tradtional gamelan repertoire is highly composed.

Our work since completing this performance has involved primarily re-introducing a standard dance work from Balinese repertoire entitled Oleg Tamulilingan composed by I Wayan Beratha.

We plan to present part of this piece along with a demo for the December 13th Open House event at 5pm in the Black Box on the 6th Floor of Town Pavilion.

Our next concert event will be a small group performance as part of  Jazz Winterlude at Johnson County Community College on January 25 at 4pm.

Individual posts will highlight both of these events.