DEWA KETUT ALIT

COMPOSER | PERFORMER | TEACHER

Born to a family of artists in Pengosekan, Bali, Dewa Alit was immersed in Balinese gamelan from early childhood. By age 13, he was playing ugal (concertmaster) in his village’s adult gamelan. From 1988 to 1995, he played in the internationally acclaimed Gamelan Semara Ratih of Ubud village, touring internationally. In 1997, a year before graduating from the Academy of Indonesian Performing Arts, he co-founded Çudamani. The virtuosity and artistic innovation of the group led to international tours featuring Dewa Alit’s compositions (U.S. 2002, Greece 2003, and Japan 2005). He is widely acknowledged as the leading Balinese composer of his generation. His 2000 composition “Geregel” was influential in Bali and abroad, and was the subject of a 50-page scholarly analysis in the journalPerspectives on New Music. His “Semara Wisaya” was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2004, and his “Pelog Slendro” at the Bang-on-a-Can Marathon in New York City in 2006. Dewa Alit is regularly invited to teach and compose for gamelan ensembles around the world and has collaborated internationally as composer, music director, and performer. He served as Gamelan Master for Evan Ziporyn’s opera A House in Bali, performing its premiere with the Bang-On-a-Can All Stars in Bali and California in 2009, and in Boston and New York in 2010. Seeking a wider path for expressing his approach to new music in gamelan, Alit founded his own gamelan group in 2007, Gamelan Salukat, introducing a new set of instruments of his own tuning and design.