I Wayan Suweca has received many awards and commissions from foundations, galleries, and art organizations. In 1992, he was commissioned by Diffusion Système Minuit du Québec to create a "kreasi baru kontemporer" (contemporary music composition) for gamelan entitled "Cyclus Kahidupan" (The Cycle of Life). The work was created at galerie Articule and was simultaneously broadcast on CKUT radio in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He directed the Gamelan de l'Université de Montréal's special concert for the anniversary of the Paris International Exhibition in 1989, which was broadcast on Radio-Canada and Radio-France. He is also a noted composer, kendang performer, and renowned gamelan gender wayang performer. He appears on more than thirty CDs for various labels, including Bali Records and Nonesuch. In 2006, he began working on a wayang kulit project and intensely researching traditional Balinese kekawin singing.
References and sources
Still and Moving Lines in the Family of Hyperbolas, Liner Notes, LP, Lovely, USA, 1986
AMERICAN WORKS FOR BALINESE GAMELAN ORCHESTRA, New World Records 80430, Liner Notes
Gamelan: Indonesian Arts in America" Special issue of Ear Magazine, volume 8 number 4, September/October/November 1983
Létourneau, André Éric, Retour de voyage en ces lieux oubliés de l'anéantissement, Galerie Articule, Montréal, 1992
Létourneau, André Éric, Actions radiophoniques in. Inter #55, Éditions interncention, Québec, 1993
Gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. The most common instruments used are metallophones played by mallets and a set of hand-played drums called kendhang/Kendang, which register the beat. The kemanak and gangsa are commonly used gamelan instruments in Bali. Other instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed instrument called a rebab, a zither-like instrument siter and vocalists named sindhen (female) or gerong (male).
Colin Carhart McPhee was a Canadian-American composer and ethnomusicologist. He is best known for being the first Western composer to make a musicological study of Bali, and developing American gamelan along with fellow composer Lou Harrison. He wrote original music influenced by that of Bali and Java, decades before such compositions that were based on world music became widespread.
Pelog is one of the essential tuning systems used in gamelan instruments that has a heptatonic scale. The other, older, scale commonly used is called slendro. Pelog has seven notes, but many gamelan ensembles only have keys for five of the pitches. Even in ensembles that have all seven notes, many pieces only use a subset of five notes, sometimes the additional 4th tone is also used in a piece like western accidentals.
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions, and jazz. Ziporyn has composed for a wide range of ensembles, including symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, many types of chamber groups, and solo works, sometimes involving electronics. Balinese gamelan, for which he has composed numerous works, has compositions. He is known for his solo performances on clarinet and bass clarinet; additionally, Ziporyn plays gender wayang and other Balinese instruments, saxophones, piano & keyboards, EWI, and Shona mbira.
Michael Tenzer is a composer, performer, and music educator and scholar.
Prof. Dr. I Made Bandem is a Balinese dancer, artist, author, and educator.
Gamelan Sekar Jaya is a Balinese gamelan ensemble located in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been called "the finest Balinese gamelan ensemble outside of Indonesia" by Indonesia's Tempo Magazine. It performs the music and dance of Bali in many different genres of Balinese gamelan, mainly gamelan gong kebyar, gamelan angklung, gender wayang, and gamelan jegog. Past performances have also featured ensembles playing in other styles as well, including gamelan joged bumbung, kecak, gender batel, gamelan gambuh, genggong, and beleganjur. GSJ has also performed contemporary pieces featuring instruments from the Western tradition.
Wayang wong, also known as wayang orang, is a type of classical Javanese and Balinese dance theatrical performance with themes taken from episodes of the Ramayāna or Mahabharāta. Performances are stylised, reflecting Javanese court culture:
Wayang wong dance drama in the central Javanese Kraton of Yogyakarta represents the epitome of Javanese aesthetic unity. It is total theatre involving dance, drama, music, visual arts, language, and literature. A highly cultured sense of formality permeates every aspect of its presentation.
Gamelan gender wayang is a style of gamelan music played in Bali, Indonesia. It is required for wayang and most sacred Balinese Hindu rituals. The smallest of gamelan ensembles, it requires only two players and is complete at four, the additional instruments doubling an octave above. Like other gamelan genres, it incorporates delicate interlocking melodies and active contrapuntal movement, yet poses unique challenges in technique and composition.
Dance in Indonesia reflects the country's diversity of ethnicities and cultures. There are more than 1,300 ethnic groups in Indonesia. Austronesian roots and Melanesian tribal forms are visible, and influences ranging from neighboring Asian and even western styles through colonization. Each ethnic group has its own dances: there are more than 3,000 original dance forms in Indonesia. The old traditions of dance and drama are being preserved in the many dance schools which flourish not only in the courts but also in the modern, government-run or supervised art academies.
André Éric Létourneau is a French Canadian media and transmedia artist, researcher, author, musician, composer, curator and professor based primarily in Montreal and Saint-Alponse-Rodriguez, Québec, Canada. He uses several pseudonyms, most notably Benjamin Muon and algojo)(algojo. His work has been associated with the development of performance art, radio art, process art, sound poetry and experimental music. Since the 1980s, Létourneau has presented intermedia works in international performance art festivals, galleries and museums such as the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre, The James H.W. Thompson Foundation in Bangkok and at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum. In 2006, he was one of the artists selected to represent Canada at the XVth Biennale de Paris under a pseudonym. Since 2012, Létourneau has also contributed to the Biennale des Arts d'Afrique de l'est in Bujumbura, the InterAzioni festival in Italy, the Steirischer Herbst in Graz, Austria, Festival Phénomena in Montreal, Grace Exhibition Space, and The Emily Harvey Foundation in New York.
I Nyoman Renbang (1937–2001) was an Indonesian musician, composer, teacher and instrument maker. He is considered by many ethnomusicologists as one of the most influential Balinese musicians and composers of the twentieth century.
Gambuh is an ancient form of Balinese dance-drama. It is accompanied by musicians in a gamelan gambuh ensemble.
Rachel Cooper is an American performing arts presenter specializing in cultural exchange. She is the Director of Global Performing Arts and Cultural Initiatives for the Asia Society, and before joining the Asia Society she headed the Festival of Indonesia which brought over 200 artists to 30 states in the United States. Along with I Wayan Suweca and Michael Tenzer, she co-founded Gamelan Sekar Jaya which was the first community-based Balinese gamelan in the United States.
I Made Subandi is a gamelan composer and performer from Gianyar, Bali.
Condong is a Balinese dance which is often performed as a preface to legong and accompanied by the semar pangulingan style of gamelan. The term also refers to a stock character, a quintessential representation of the maidservant, found in the condong dance, as well as the legong, gambuh, and arja dances.
Kebyar Duduk is a traditional Balinese dance created by a Balinese man I Ketut Marya and first performed publicly in 1925. Inspired by the development of the quick-paced gamelan gong kebyar, kebyar duduk is named for the seated and half-seated positions taken by the dancers. It does not convey a story, but is interpretative.
Oleg, or also known by its conventional long name Oleg Tamulilingan or Oleg Tambulilingan) is a form of traditional Balinese dance originated from the Indonesian island of Bali which featured unique dance movements that symbolizes the wild life of bumblebees, thus sometimes it is also colloquially known as 'Balinese bumblebee dance'.
Wayang kulit is a traditional form of puppet-shadow play originally found in the cultures of Java and Bali in Indonesia. In a wayang kulit performance, the puppet figures are rear-projected on a taut linen screen with a coconut-oil light. The dalang manipulates carved leather figures between the lamp and the screen to bring the shadows to life. The narratives of wayang kulit often have to do with the major theme of good vs. evil.
Arja, also known as Balinese opera, is a popular form of Balinese theatre which combines elements of opera, dance, and drama. It was created in 1825 for the funeral of a Balinese prince. In the beginning it had an all-male cast; since the 20th century all performers have been women.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
