Rachel Cooper (April 20, 1954) 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. [1] Before joining the Asia Society she headed the Festival of Indonesia [2] 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.
Cooper lived in Indonesia from 1983 to 1988, teaching English while participating in performances at Taman Ismail Marzuki. In 1985 she helped organize Gamelan Sekar Jaya's first tour to Indonesia. [3] The group had been invited to perform at the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar and would continue to perform in six other cities including Jogjakarta, in Central Java. After returning to the United States, Cooper coordinated the Performing Arts program of the Festival of Indonesia from 1990 to 91.
She has worked at the Asia Society since 1993 and has produced and presented over 300 performances, tours, and commissioned artists. She has worked with many of the premiere cultural institutions in the United States. Among the many projects she has produced are Creative Voices of Muslim Asia, [4] Chorus Repertory Theater of Manipur, [5] Dance the Spirit of Cambodia, [6] Nan Jombang, [7] Shahram and Hafez Nazeri in the Path of Rumi, [8]
Cooper has presented and curated film programs from India, Indonesia, China, Iran, Japan, Korea, and Thailand, as well as producing and presenting performances from throughout Asia. She has co-sponsored and presented various film festivals and film series at the Asia Society, including the Iranian Documentary and Short Film Festival, the Asian American International Film Festival, and the IAAC India Film Festival, among others. She has organized major arts and culture initiatives, including the Festival of Song: Music of India and Pakistan. In addition, she has conducted and published research on the global impact of the arts, which resulted in the report Making a Difference through the Arts. In 2006 she was awarded the Dawson Award for Sustained Excellence in Arts Programming. [9]
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 and a set of hand-drums called kendang, which keep the beat. The kemanak, a banana-shaped idiophone, and the gangsa, another metallophone, are also commonly used gamelan instruments on Bali. Other notable instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed string instrument called a rebab, and a zither-like instrument called a siter, used in Javanese gamelan. Additionally, vocalists may be featured, being referred to as sindhen for females or gerong for males.
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.
Jegog is a form of gamelan music indigenous to Bali, Indonesia, played on instruments made of bamboo. The tradition of jegog is centered in Jembrana, a region in Western Bali. In recent years jegog has started to become popular in other regions of Bali with a few groups being established in central Bali to entertain tourists. International interest has been spread by tourists visiting Bali and by recordings. There are virtually no ensembles outside of Bali with the exception of at least two groups in Japan, one in the United States and one in Germany. Jegog music is very fast, loud, rhythmic and precise. Pieces last from a few minutes to as long as thirty minutes.
Michael Tenzer is a composer, performer, and music educator and scholar.
I Nyoman Windha is one of the leading musicians and contemporary composers of Balinese gamelan music. He was born at Banjar Kutri, Singapadu, Gianyar, Bali. Windha graduated from the National Institute of Arts (ISI) in Denpasar, Bali, receiving a degree equivalent to an M.A. in Music Performance and Composition. Since that time, Windha has been a member of the faculty in music and composition from 1985 until 2020, and has also served as an adjunct for the National Taiwan University Graduate Institute of Musicology since 2018. He has composed dozens of compositions for Balinese gamelan in many genres but primarily in kebyar style. His compositions, such as Puspanjali (1989), have been incorporated into the standard repertoire of Balinese performing groups and many have won awards at Bali's annual gamelan competition.
Joged bumbung is a style of gamelan music from Bali, Indonesia on instruments made primarily out of bamboo. The ensemble gets its name from joged, a flirtatious dance often performed at festivals and parties. This style of Gamelan is especially popular in Northern and Western Bali, but is easily found all over the island. Unlike many styles of Balinese Gamelan which have sacred roles in religious festivals, Joged music is much more secular, and in many ways has become the folk music of Bali. With the rapid rise of tourism in recent decades, Joged music is now often found being performed at hotels and restaurants.
Wayang is a traditional form of puppet theatre play originating from the Indonesian island of Java. Wayang refers to the entire dramatic show. Sometimes the leather puppet itself is referred to as wayang. Performances of wayang puppet theatre are accompanied by a gamelan orchestra in Java, and by gender wayang in Bali. The dramatic stories depict mythologies, such as episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as well as local adaptations of cultural legends. Traditionally, a wayang is played out in a ritualized midnight-to-dawn show by a dalang, an artist and spiritual leader; people watch the show from both sides of the screen.
Legong: Dance of the Virgins is a 1935 synchronized drama travelogue sound film in color, one of the last feature films shot using the two-color Technicolor process, and one of the last films shot by a major Hollywood studio without any dialogue. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects. It is a drama based on a Balinese native tale, with travelogue elements depicting Balinese culture. Legong and the follow-up travelogue drama Kliou, the Killer were the last mainstream silent films to be released in the US.
Mythili Kumar is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer. She performs the Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, and Odissi styles of Indian classical dance. Founder of Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose and she is a lecturer in dance at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Mantle Hood was an American ethnomusicologist. Among other areas, he specialized in studying gamelan music from Indonesia. Hood pioneered, in the 1950s and 1960s, a new approach to the study of music, and the creation of the first American university program devoted to ethnomusicology, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was known for a suggestion, somewhat novel at the time, that his students learn to play the music they were studying.
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, gamelan semar pegulingan, kecak, gender batel, gamelan gambuh, genggong, and beleganjur. GSJ has also performed contemporary pieces featuring instruments from the Western tradition.
Gamelan, although Indonesia is its origin place, is found outside of that country. There are forms of gamelan that have developed outside Indonesia, such as American gamelan and Malay Gamelan in Malaysia.
The Asian Cultural Council (ACC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing international cultural exchange between Asia and the U.S. and between the countries of Asia through the arts. Founded by John D. Rockefeller III in 1963, ACC has invested over $100 million in grants to artists and arts professionals representing 16 fields and 26 countries through over 6,000 exchanges. ACC supports $1.4 million in grants annually for individuals and organizations.
(Joseph) Vincent McDermott was a classically trained American composer and ethnomusicologist. His works show particular influence from the musics of South and Southeast Asia, particularly the gamelan music of Java. He was among the second generation of American composers to create and promote new compositions for gamelan.
Richard Marriott is an American composer and performer. He has composed for film, television, dance, theater, opera, installations and video games. He is the founder and artistic director of the Club Foot Orchestra, an important modern ensemble for live music performance with silent films. His teachers include Dominick Argento and Paul Fetler at the University of Minnesota, Pauline Oliveros at UCSD, North Indian sarod master Ali Akbar Khan, shakuhachi master Masayuki Koga, and Balinese composers Nyoman Windha and Made Subandi. Marriott was a member of Snakefinger's History of the Blues and has recorded with The Residents, Brazilian Girls, "Singer at Large" Johnny J. Blair, and many others. He performs on brass and woodwind instruments, Western and Asian.
I Wayan Suweca is a highly respected performer of Balinese gamelan. Since the 1970s, he has taught and performed extensively throughout Asia, Europe, and America. In the early 1980s, along with his students Michael Tenzer and Rachel Ann Cooper, he founded and led the famous Sekar Jaya gamelan ensemble in Berkeley, California. In 1993, he cofounded the ensemble Giri Kedaton in Montreal. From 1982 to 2004, he was professor at the National Arts Academy of Indonesia (STSI) in Bali. From 1987 to 1993, he was a guest teacher at Université de Montréal in Canada and in Rochester, USA. For other students, See: List of music students by teacher: R to S#I Wayan Suweca.
Christine Southworth is an American composer of postminimal music and works with combinations of Western ensembles, electronics, and world music ensembles including Balinese gamelan and bagpipes. She performs Balinese gamelan and gender wayang with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Gamelan Galak Tika, as well as Galician Gaita and Great Highland Bagpipes. She co-founded Ensemble Robot, a cooperative of engineers, artists and musicians working together to invent robotic musical instruments. She was also the general manager of Gamelan Galak Tika from 2004 through 2013. Her own music incorporates her work with Balinese gamelan and with technology and electronics, as well as reaching beyond these influences with an expanded palette of contemporary classical, jazz and rock, and world music from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
I Made Subandi was a gamelan composer and performer from Gianyar, Bali.
The Oakland Asian Cultural Center, also referred to as the OACC, is an Oakland-based nonprofit cultural center that carries out Asian and Pacific Islander American arts and culture programs. It is located in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza in Oakland Chinatown, residing three blocks away from the 12th Street Civic Center BART station on Broadway.
Keith Terry is an American percussionist, rhythm dancer, and educator. He is best known for pioneering the art form, Body Music. He is a soloist and the ensemble director of Crosspulse, an Oakland, California-based, non-profit organization dedicated to the creation and performance of rhythm-based intercultural music and dance. Crosspulse was founded by Terry with Deborah Lloyd and Jim Hogan and produces dance and music works ranging in size from solos and duos to ensembles of one hundred performers, touring ambitious and logistically complex performances throughout the world. In addition, Crosspulse produces educational and outreach programs for children and adults and audio and video recordings and books, including "The Rhythm of Math." His teaching method has been praised by music educators, especially within the Orff system. In 2008, Terry was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship.