FALL FREQUENCIES

Sunday, 8th December 2024
1.30pm
STONE CIRCLE THEATRE

@ Ridgewood Presbyterian Church

LUBOMIR SMILENOV X MATT MORAN | GAMELAN DHARMA SWARA
MAS BUDI STREET FOOD | VARIETY COFFEE

PROGRAM

LUBOMIR SMILENOV X MATT MORAN

BULGARIAN FOLK MELODIES AND IMPROVISATIONS
Lubomir Smilenov | Kaba Gaida and Gadulka
Matt Moran | Tüpan

GAMELAN DHARMA SWARA

NGAYON
I Gusti Nyoman (Komin) Darta 2018

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

MERAK NGELO
Gender Wayang Ensemble
Traditional

SUARA SANDI
I Nyoman Windha 1985

BARIS
Traditional

WIRANATA
I Nyoman Kaler 1942
revised I Nyoman Ridet 1945

PROGRAM NOTES

NGAYON

Ngayon is Gusti Komin’s creative imagining of the instrumental piece preceding a Balinese shadow puppet play. The Kayonan is the first puppet to emerge, signifying the set-up period of the ensemble cast of puppets for the play. The title Ngayon is a play on words— “I am dancing the Kayonan.” With his inclination to deeply explore simple ideas and minor instances, Komin creates a piece around the moment before which a story begins.

PAGAR AYU

Co-created by Artist-in-Residence, Gusti Komin and longtime 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, however, this exploratory work will 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.

SUARA SANDI

Composed in 1985 as the overture for an undergraduate final recital by the now revered Balinese composer I Nyoman Windha, Suara Sandi is one of the earliest works that explored the tonal possibilities of the emergent semara dana set—a heptatonic system that embeds multiple modes. This work is an introduction to an extended suite entitled Kindama based upon a little-known character from the first canto of the Mahabharata epic. “Suara Sandi” translates to the Song of Dusk. In Balinese Hindu belief, times of transition are spiritually potent and potentially dangerous; dusk is considered an especially dangerous time, and the work foreshadows the inauspicious and unintentional slaying of Kindama by Pandu. In Suara Sandi transition is represented musically by dramatic modulations between two core modes in Balinese seven-tone music.

BARIS

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 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.

WIRANATA

Tari Wiranata is a non-narrative work 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.

ABOUT LUBOMIR SMILENOV & MATT MORAN

Multi-instrumentalist Lubomir Smilenov explores the rich intersection of world music traditions with a focus on Bulgarian folk influences. Partnering with Matt Moran on tupan, they bring to life complex, odd-time rhythms and the distinct sounds of traditional instruments such as the kaba gaida bagpipe and the gadulka, an ancient bowed instrument. Lubomir has showcased his music at esteemed venues, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ragas Live Festival, Golden Fest, and various other concert spaces throughout New York City. Matt is a percussionist in the Balkan, jazz, and new music worlds who has performed and taught internationally for 25 years, and co-leads the music program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility for Carnegie Hall.

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 compete in the prestigious 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 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.

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

MUSICIANS
Liam Bader
Jonathan Bailey
Elizabeth Behrend
Oliver Budiardjo
Tom Burckhardt
Chris Canahui
Samir Chopra
Ari Dalbert
Steve DeBellis
Stephanie Dixon
Paul Feitzinger
Calvin Grad
Charlie Gullion
Meesh Hauser
Ndaru Kartikaningsih
Victoria Lo Mellin
Annie McCutchan
José Mediavilla
Gary Meister
Joel Mellin
Kyle Miller
Vera Much
Caitlin Pearce
Christopher Romero
Samantha Simorangkir
Nora Stanley
Coco Walsh

DANCERS
Ilona Bito
Miranda Danusugondo
Teresa Ibarra
Ndaru Kartikaningsih
Siwen Xi