Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his former teacher and contemporary, Henry Cowell, but later moved toward incorporating elements of non-Western cultures into his work. Notable examples include a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan instruments, inspired after studying with noted gamelan musician Kanjeng Notoprojo in Indonesia. Harrison would create his own musical ensembles and instruments with his partner, William Colvig, who are now both considered founders of the American gamelan movement and world music; along with composers Harry Partch and Claude Vivier, and ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee.
Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is a British composer of classical music.
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.
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.
Tan Dun is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor. A leading figure of contemporary classical music, he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a dichotomy which has shaped much of his life and music. Having collaborated with leading orchestras around the world, Tan is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grawemeyer Award for his opera Marco Polo (1996) and both an Academy Award and Grammy Award for his film score in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). His oeuvre as a whole includes operas, orchestral, vocal, chamber, solo and film scores, as well as genres that Tan terms "organic music" and "music ritual."
Michael Tenzer is a composer, performer, and music educator and scholar.
Legong: Dance of the Virgins is a 1935 drama travelogue silent film, one of the last feature films shot using the two-color Technicolor process, and one of the last silent films shot by a major Hollywood studio. 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.
Shirish Korde, is a Ugandan composer of Indian ancestry. He is the Chair of the Music Department at the College of the Holy Cross and has previously been on the faculty of the Berklee College of Music, the New England Conservatory, and Brown University. Korde studied jazz and composition at the Berklee College of Music, analysis and composition at the New England Conservatory, and ethnomusicology at Brown University.
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.
Gareth Vincent Farr is a New Zealand composer and percussionist. He has released a number of classical CDs and composed a number of works performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) and Royal New Zealand Ballet. He has also performed in drag under the name Lilith LaCroix in a show called Drumdrag and has also released a CD under that name.
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.
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.
Lenny Seidman is a tabla player, a composer, a co-director of the Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra, and a World Music/Jazz curator at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.
Real Time Opera (RTO) is a performing arts organization dedicated to the production of new opera. Founded in 2002, it is based in Contoocook, New Hampshire and Oberlin, Ohio and produces opera across the United States, engaging professional singers and a range of instrumental ensembles for performances at a wide variety of venues.
The Club Foot Orchestra is a musical ensemble known for their silent film scores. Their influences include Eastern European folk music, impressionism, and jazz fusion; The New Yorker described their style as "music that bubbles up from the intersection of aesthetics and the id."
Anthony Damian Ritchie is a New Zealand composer and academic. He has been a freelance composer accepting commissions for works and in 2018 he became professor of composition at The University of Otago after 18 years of teaching composition. Since 2020 he has been head of Otago's School of Performing Arts, a three-year position. His works number over two hundred, and include symphonies, operas, concertos, choral works, chamber music and solo works.
The Prince of the Pagodas is a ballet created for The Royal Ballet by choreographer John Cranko with music commissioned from Benjamin Britten. Its premiere took place on 1 January 1957 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, conducted by Britten.
I Made Subandi is a gamelan composer and performer from Gianyar, Bali. Having studied with his father, drummer and gender wayang player I Made Dig, and at SMKI ('85-'88) and STSI ('89-'93), he teaches at the Indonesian Academy of Performing Arts in Bali. In 1999, during his residency with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, he composed a soundtrack for the 1933 silent film "Legong Dance of the Virgins" with American composer Richard Marriott, scored for Balinese gamelan, string quartet, trumpet and clarinet. He has collaborated with Dutch trio Boi Akih and American ensemble Club Foot Orchestra. He is well known for his use of experimentation. Tenzer describes Subandi as one of a few composers who, "have achieved a self-conscious and fundamental break with the tabuh kreasi form of the recent past."
Gisle Kverndokk is a Norwegian contemporary composer.
Jonathon Grasse is an American composer, ethnomusicologist, and improvising electric guitarist. He is a professor of music at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
