Gamelan Dharma Swara

// Charmaine Lee

Sunday, 7th JUNE 2026
ROULETTE - 8PM

Today’s program will be approximately 2 hours

PROGRAM

CHARMAINE LEE

- INTERMISSION -

GAMELAN DHARMA SWARA

LAMBDA SERPENTIS

I Gusti Nyoman (Komin) Darta
2026
World Premiere

PAGAR AYU

I Gusti Nyoman (Komin) Darta, Composer
Shoko Yamamuro, Choreographer
2024

SEKAR GENDOT

Gender Wayang Ensemble
Traditional

REBONG

Gender Wayang Ensemble
Traditional

BARIS

Traditional

NOMADEN

I Dewa Ketut Alit
2015

WIRANATA

I Nyoman Kaler 1942
revised I Nyoman Ridet 1945

Visuals - DREAMPTYCH I
Joel Mellin

PROGRAM NOTES

LAMBDA SERPENTIS

Lambda Serpentis is a star in the constellation Serpens. Located approximately 39 light years from Earth, it features its own exoplanet and is double the luminosity of the Sun. The star was "adopted" for the composer I Gusti Nyoman Darta (Gusti Komin) by his friend Cyndi Andreozzi, to help fund astronomy research. A donation was made in the name Sari ing Kerta, Gusti Komin's parents, as a tribute to their love story and to the gamelan piece he originally wrote for them (2017). Upon receiving this gift, Komin was inspired by the unique position of Lambda Serpentis, the rare star visible to the naked eye from both Bali and New York—a luminous celestial body connecting humanity in—and to—its universe. Here he paints portraits of various dimensions of the cosmos, from its sparse, floaty expanse, to its glittering, star-dense galaxies. 

Lambda Sepentis is Komin’s interpretation of a tabuh telu lelambatan composition, a classical style of Balinese gamelan music that is more stately and ritualistic in nature, and comprising three parts.  At present, a gamelan’s program for a mebarung (battle of the bands performance) is typically opened by a lelambatan to intimidate their opponent. Dharma Swara will accordingly launch its program with Lambda Serpentis when they mebarung with various gamelan groups in Bali.

PAGAR AYU

Co-created by Artist-in-Residence, Gusti Komin and longtime Balinese dance teacher and choreographer, Shoko Yamamuro, the traditional welcome piece to open a performance is reimagined. Works of this genre — typically in the female style — often focus on notions of reception and invitation alongside purification and blessing. This exploratory work will however, also consider the group's identity as New Yorkers performing Balinese arts via the lens of expatriate artists — with the vast majority in the ensemble not being ethnically Balinese, nor having spent time in Bali. Shifts in the concepts of gender, style, and movement are explored, with the artists drawing simultaneously from Balinese roots and the freedom afforded by their émigré experience, in an introspective and ultimately, celebratory work. The piece vibrates from deep, underground to soar high above in the sky, with ideas of aspiration, lightness and beauty alongside those of grittiness and toughness, work and preparedness. The co-creators worked remotely to each other (New York and California, respectively) to form a uniquely responsive piece to persona, distance and context. 

GAMELAN GENDER WAYANG

Gender Wayang is an ancient style of gamelan music that often accompanies wayang (shadow puppet theatre) and most sacred Balinese Hindu rituals such as cremations and tooth filing ceremonies. The smallest of the gamelan ensembles, it requires only two players and is complete at four, the additional instruments doubling an octave above. It is considered to be the most complex music with elaborate kotekan (interlocking configurations) in both odd and even meters which must synchronise with their partner’s music. The hands are constantly playing contrapuntally. Damping is difficult and done with the outer part of the fourth and fifth fingers. The music has a resonating, shimmering and vibrating quality rich in overtones which is created by striking bronze keys with wooden mallets, all within the framework of pentatonic slendro tuning.

BARIS

The dance piece Baris references the ancient Balinese soldiers who protected the raja-raja (kings) and is a proud display of masculinity and fierceness. It is performed prior to ritualistic events as well as for secular entertainment, and exemplifies a duality characteristic of Balinese dance: grand gestures complemented by intimate, choreographed eye movements. Baris demonstrates triumph in battle and the display of sublimity of a commanding presence.

NOMADEN

Commissioned by Dharma Swara, Nomaden was written during an itinerant period of Dewa Alit’s life. For three months of the year, he commuted between Boston and New York and slept on couches, hopping between gamelan groups. Ambulatory and unsettled, Nomaden seeks resolution, wandering between 5- and 7-tone scales, unconventional cyclic frameworks, and at times encountering different meters running in parallel. Our journey to learn Nomaden has been equally circuitous, coinciding with a period before we acquired our gamelan, and were working piecemeal on an assortment of instruments.

WIRANATA

Tari Wiranata is a non-narrative dance piece that portrays the ideal qualities of a king or a protector of people: boldness, strength, and courage. The dance is said to have been created by I Nyoman Kaler, one of Bali’s earliest and most famous kebyar dancers and teachers, and later revised by his student, I Nyoman Ridet. Popularised by the beloved bebancian* dancer Jero Gadung and typically performed by women, Wiranata features several unique choreographic features, including intensely darting and snaking eye movements, and a characteristic flipping of the dancers’ wrists. The Wiranata being presented today is a version taught by revered bebancian dancer and teacher Agung Oka Partini.

*Bebancian is a category of Balinese dance in which the character is depicted as neither stereotypically male or female, but rather, a third, neutral gender. Utilising aspects of both male and female dance techniques, the dancers quickly alternate between refined grace and aggressive sharpness.

DREAMPTYCH 1

1. a series of thoughts, images of emotions occurring during sleep and presented in parts of sections as a composed work while awake.
2. a series of thoughts, images, or emotions composed while awake and presented in parts or sections for the purposes of informing and/or inspiring similar activity during sleep

ABOUT CHARMAINE LEE

Charmaine Lee (b. 1991) is an Australian vocalist based in New York. Using the voice, feedback, and live processing, Lee's practice is primarily concerned with risk-taking, playfulness, and improvisation. She has been recognized as “extraordinary” by New Yorker and has been featured in New York Times, Washington Post, and Wire Magazine. As a composer, Lee has collaborated with leading ensembles including Kronos Quartet and the Wet Ink Ensemble. Her long-standing collaborators include Conrad Tao, Eric Wubbels, and Ikue Mori (MacArthur Fellow). Lee frequently guest lectures on building a personal language and creative agency at undergraduate and graduate-level composition programs including Princeton University, Stanford, and the New School. Lee serves on the Artistic Advisory Council at ISSUE Project Room and co-runs a record label with Randall Dunn, Kou Records, dedicated to artists who have developed singular musical languages.

Lee is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (2025), Emergent Ventures winner (2024), ISSUE Project Room Artist-in-Residence (2019), and a Roulette Van Lier Fellow (2021).

ABOUT GAMELAN DHARMA SWARA

Gamelan Dharma Swara—"a duty of perpetuating sound"—has built a reputation as one of the country’s most accomplished and groundbreaking ensembles. The group performs a spellbinding blend of iconic traditional pieces paired with bold contemporary compositions, spanning some 500 years, and has been called "thrilling, mesmerizing and powerful" (New York Times) and "sublime, receiving perhaps the weekend's most rapturous response" (The New Yorker).

The first non-Balinese gamelan invited to participate in the prestigious gong kebyar competition at the Bali Arts Festival, the group has toured Bali and performed at Lincoln Center at the invitation of The New York Philharmonic, BAM, MoMA, Central Park Summerstage, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Symphony Space, The Asia Society, National Sawdust, Basilica Hudson, and at Yale, Princeton and Columbia Universities.

Dharma Swara has commissioned and premiered works by contemporary composers including leading Balinese composer Gusti Komin-who has worked with the group as artist-in-residence since 2017, and whose composition Sari Ing Kerta the group premiered in 2018-in addition to Joel Mellin (Synesthesia, 2012 world premiere), Nerissa Campbell (Legian 1983/Breathe My War, 2016), Matthew Welch (Bhima Swarga, 2006). The group has also performed works by many seminal Balinese composers, including Made Subandi's Kupu-Kupu Kuning (2011 US premiere) and Dewa Ketut Alit's Cecanangan and Geregel (2015 US premiere).

The group plays on instruments made by pande Made Sukerta in Bali in 2017, and combines the popular 20th century gong kebyar tuning (selisir, a five-tone scale) with the older seven-tone semar pagulingan (16th or 17th c.), making it possible to play a wide range of traditional and contemporary repertoire. Dharma Swara is proudly women-led, spearheaded by president/ugal player Victoria Lo Mellin and vice-president/dancer Miranda Danusugondo. Based in Queens, New York, the most diverse county in the US, the group maintains a commitment to its long-standing core values of celebrating community and promoting inclusion.

Gamelan Dharma Swara is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organisation operating under the legal name Arts Indonesia.

ABOUT I GUSTI NYOMAN DARTA (GUSTI KOMIN)

Gusti Komin Darta is a musician, artist, and teacher from the village of Pengosekan, Bali. He has been hailed as a leading composer, performer, and teacher of Balinese music of his generation. He first studied music with his father, renowned musician Gusti Ketut Kerta, and began performing professionally for shadow puppet plays (wayang) at the age of 9, eventually enrolling at the prestigious national arts conservatory, now known as the Indonesian Institute for the Arts. Gusti Komin is a founding member of the virtuosic Balinese gamelan Çudamani and has toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan and the United States.

Gusti Komin currently performs and teaches widely along the U.S. east coast and is sought after as a composer, performer, and educator. He is Founding Director of the innovative chamber gamelan Saiban, and teaches at various American universities including MIT, as well as community-based groups such as Gamelan Galak Tika in Boston and Nusantara Arts Gamelan in Buffalo, and Gamelan Dharma Swara in NYC.

Widely acknowledged Master of gendér wayang, one of its foremost contemporary composers blending traditional and modern gamelan music in imaginative ways, exacting teacher and rebellious spirit, Komin writes music that explodes conventions and pushes limitations of even the strongest performers.

ABOUT I DEWA KETUT ALIT (DEWA ALIT)

Born to a family of artists in Bali, Dewa Alit has been composing since his teenage years and is widely considered a pioneer for his radical, yet calculated treatment of tradition in gamelan music. Çudamani, which he co-founded in 1997, was an early platform for showcasing his innovative ideas and compositions, including Geregel (2000). Dewa Alit is highly sought after as a teacher and composer in Bali and abroad: he has worked with ensembles such as MIT’s Gamelan Galak Tika and Gamelan Dharma Swara in New York; and his works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Bang On A Can Marathon, and Brooklyn Academy of Music among many other international venues and festivals. He also writes for non-gamelan ensembles such as New York’s Talujon Percussion and Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern, who commissioned his work Open My Door, which premiered in Germany in 2015.

Seeking a wider path for expressing his approach to new music, Alit founded his own gamelan group in 2007, Gamelan Salukat, introducing a new set of instruments of his own tuning and design. The group made their first European tour in 2018.

GAMELAN DHARMA SWARA

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
I Gusti Nyoman (Komin) Darta

MUSICIANS
Elizabeth Behrend
Stephanie Bruno Dixon
Oliver Budiardjo
Tom Burckhardt
Chris Canahui
Samir Chopra
Ari Dalbert
Paul Feitzinger
Calvin Grad
Charlie Gullion
Meesh Hauser
Rebecca Klassen
Victoria Lo Mellin
Annie McCutchan
José Mediavilla
Gary Meister
Joel Mellin
Vera Much
Christopher Romero
Gavin Ryan
Samantha Simorangkir
Bear Strayer
Coco Walsh

DANCERS
Miranda Danusugondo
Jessica Flanagan
Ndaru Kartikaningsih
Sabrina Kiamilev
Verena Lee
Angela Nawang

RAFFLE!

We are launching a fundraising raffle before our Bali Tour later this month! There are 4 bundles with a great variety of offerings! Purchase tickets at the merch table or send us a Venmo/Zelle @ info@dharmaswara.org (Arts Indonesia Inc.) — don't forget to include your chosen Bundle No. in the notes.

WINNERS WILL BE DRAWN AND NOTIFIED ON WEDNESDAY, 17TH JUNE

BUNDLE 1  |  RIDGEWOOD SMALL BUSINESS | $10
Get Right Wellness 4-Pack Hypnosis ($450)
Honey Moon Coffee Shop Gift Pack: 2 bags coffee & mug ($65)
Pizzeria Panina Gift Card ($50)
Stay Forever Gift Card ($50)
Gamelan Dharma Swara Tote Bag ($30)

BUNDLE 2  |  CURIOUS LISTENER | $5
The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana - Michael Azerrad, author-signed copy ($50)
ghOstMiSt T-Shirt & aQarawaQ New EP Release Digital Download ($40)
Joel Mellin - 'Must Pass' LP ($25)
Numün - 'Book Of Beyond' LP ($25)
Gamelan Dharma Swara Enamel Pins, set of 3
Nora Stanley - 'Glass' Cassette ($15)
Kyle Miller & Cotter Camplin 'Parallelism' Cassette ($10)

BUNDLE 3  |  GOOD TASTE 1 | $5
CrossFit Bridge & Tunnel One Month Pass ($250)
Rule of Thirds Gift Card ($100)
OPC (Other People’s Clothes) Gift Card ($50)
Gamelan Dharma Swara Embroidered Cap ($25)

BUNDLE 4  |  GOOD TASTE 2 | $5
Variety Coffee Gift Pack: tote bag, t-shirt, 3 boxes of coffee, tumbler ($120)
Rule of Thirds Gift Card ($100)
Gamelan Dharma Swara Limited Edition Long-Sleeve T ($50)