May 1, 2012
Substantial chunks of the day were taken up by a series of rehearsals for the wayang. The venue was a modern dining hall, with a kind of semicircular shape. Spacially this allowed for a very good arrangement, with room for audience all around, and a separate staging area off to one side for dance and video. The ceiling was perhaps a little low, and the sound less resonant than might have been ideal.
There were seven amalgamated gamelan groups from over the UK who needed to rehearse: around 170 musicians in total! Coordinating all of this was musical director John Pawson, and by and large we got to do what we needed to do, albeit not without a certain amount of last minute stress. A day of hurry up and wait, mostly, with the Scottish group almost missing out on our final fifteen minute run-through.
Now, an interesting aside, but I want to tread carefully, as this concerns an overheard remark. One of the groups was about to rehearse a piece which incorporated clarinet, and someone from one of the other groups was apparently heard to say ‘Here comes the sacrilege’. Maybe this was a joke: probably it was a joke. I entirely respect the conservative impulse in traditional musics, but ‘sacrilege’ seems a very strong word. Of course we were all thinking, ‘Wait till he hears the bagpipes!’.
An excellent Indonesian meal was provided for the participants: I had the rendang, always a favourite!
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May 1, 2012
Today’s conference activities were somewhat disrupted by a revised schedule of wayang rehersals, which also caused our Scottish group a certain amount of last minute phone calls to try to get everyone there in time. I was fortunately able to make Helen Loth’s paper session ‘“Why gamelan, couldn’t we just use steel-pans?”: The use of gamelan with special needs groups and populations’. Helen is engaged on doctoral research in this area, and presented an illuminating account of her findings so far. Her application of the term ‘special needs groups’ is very broad: in effect she is surveying pretty much the a full range of what I would might have called ‘community music’ with gamelan in the UK. After a literature review, she presented a series of tables full of interesting nuggets of information: for instance, the most common timescale for this kind of work seems to be the (often criticised) one-off workshop, followed by the 1-2 week residency. I was particularly interested in a diagram which laid out people’s perceived feelings about the different tunings one could potentialy use, slendro, pelog, Sundanese and two Balinese tunings. I was also fascinated by some of the negative perceptions of gamelan music which she had identified in her study. With the rescheduled day there was little time for discussion: this would have been an interesting area to probe further.
I’ve now been to two really excellent workshops by Jonathan Roberts. A number of years ago I participated in an illuminating session on wayang puppets and puppetry, and this morning he gave us a great section on gerongan, the unison (mostly male) singing which accompanies Javanese gamelan. In a brave but completely correct move, I think, Jonathan had us do hardly any singing, but spent the majority of the time on Javanese pronunciation. There are a number of sounds in the language which are not found in English, which we worked through in some detail: at times the session almost turned into – bilabial fricative?! – a lecture on phonetics. I still struggle to hear the difference between those d and t sounds, but I think I have clearer idea how to make them.
After the pronunciation, Jonathan took us through some techniques in Javanese vocal production. He started off by busting the myth that it is ’nasal’. Instead, we were to try yawning, to start to feel the action of the pharynx and how that could be brought into action to produce a kind of vocal resonance which he called ’twang’. I can’t do it yet, but at least I’m going to stop singing through my nose!
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May 1, 2012
At last, we get to the piece we have all been working towards for so many months:
Kanda Buwana is the company name of dhalang Matthew Isaac Cohen. I have known Matthew for a number of years, most notably during the period when he was at Glasgow University. Matthew was responsible for bringing dhalang Ki Joko Susilo to Scotland, and Mas Joko, as we called him, was in turn reponsible for a transformation in the approach of Gamelan Naga Mas. He brought to us a great chunk of highly distinctive repertoire, most of it derived from the wayang, which we still play today: a talu, unusual srepeg and sampak, and Joko’s arrangements of such pieces as Caping Gunung, Gambang Suling and Wong Donya. Our musical director Signy Jakobsdottir soaked up a year’s worth of wayang drumming from Joko: Matthew was always around, playing peking devising wayang in English with Joko, with his then young daughter Hannah climbing all over him in rehearsal. Happy days.
To commemorate 30th anniversary of York’s Gamelan Sekar Petak, Matthew created ‘Lokananta, or the Playerless Gamelan’, interweaving a number of different oral and literary sources with music which John Pawson had garnered from gamelan groups across the UK. Each section of the wayang was accompanied by a different group: in order, Cardiff Gamelan, Gamelan Midwest (comprising Cheltenham and Oxford), Gamelan Scotland (Aberdeen University, Gado-gado and Naga Mas), Gamelan Sekar Petak (York), Gamelan South East (Cambridge, Siswa Sukra, Southbank Gamelan Players), Gamelan South West (Bath Spa, Bristol), and Gamelan North (Chopwell, Dwi Gambira Sari, Durham.)
A full DVD of the show is in preparation, and I’m not going to attempt to describe the whole thing. The high point of the show for me was John Pawson’s arrangement of Subakastawa Nyamat. Arrangement is too small a word for it: this was a unique artistic creation, bringing together all of the tunings, players and gamelans in a melding of Kodok Ngorek and Subakastawa. A great wave of building emotion as the first gamelan descended from the heavens, and all the musicians spread around the room gradually joined in singing ‘Mideringrat…’:
A moment I will never forget.
Though I say so myself, Gamelan Scotland acquitted themselves extremely well: ‘blown away’ was the response we seemed to get from everyone, not least for the dramatic entrance of our piper Hazen Metro on Margaret Smith’s piece Iron Pipes. Another emotional moment for me as Mags sang her arrangement of Ca’ the Yowes, and a scary moment for me when I had to lead the entire audience in a brief kecak! I also played Gamelunk, of course, which came off pretty well.
As to the wayang itself: the amplifiation of Matthew’s voice was not entirely satisfactory on the musician’s side of the screen, and there was much I could not follow. Matthew has a wicked sense of humour, and can be very good at the interplay and in-jokes between the musicians and the puppeteer: again, some of this seemed to get lost. I was impressed with Matthew’s puppet technique, including a great trick of catching the limbs of one puppet between another and the screen, used to great effect in some of the fight scenes.
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April 30, 2012
Day 1 of the Gathering of the Gamelans here at York was very exciting and engaging. A great chance to catch up with old friends from the gamelan world, put faces to names, and meet new people.
I left Glasgow purposely very early in order to get down in time to catch Charles Matthews’ presentation ‘Searching for an approach to gamelan and electronic music’. I’ve been following Charles on twitter on his recent trip to Indonesia where he was exploring some of these approaches in their native setting, and I was very curious to see what he has been up to. The session started with a performance devised in collaboration with Charlotte Pugh, for gender and laptop. On screen we were able to watch Charles’ Max patch in action, as he created what one might term ’electroacoustic cengkok’ to compliment Charlotte’s gender on ‘Sri Katon’. One of the most interesting aspects was his use of a fader on a control surface to manipulate time, ‘scratching’ his way through each gotra: a unique approach, as far as I am aware.
More pieces followed, showing a variety of improvisatory approaches, some manipulating Charlotte’s live sound. Overall the music was mostly slow and evolving: I would be interested to see whether these approaches would work in a more lively style.
We then had an excellent presentation by Sarah Kekus, Ali McCaw, and Chris Stones, ‘Exploring sound worlds – creative exploration of traditional cultures from Northern England and Central Java’. A great three-way act, with Chris starting off by getting a few people down from the audience, myself included, to work up a texture for lithophone and gamelan. One this was established, Ali gave us a performance with some wayang golek, including an appearance from a puppet of Peter Crosthwaite, a C19th figure who both travelled in the Far East and established a tradition of Cumbrian lithophony. Sarah Kekus outlined her experiences of gamelan in Cumbria, beginning with an iron Suhirdjan gamelan which she obtained for her school. An excellent presentation of a (perhaps distinctively British?) strand of community/education work with gamelan.
Neil Sorrell lead a session entitled ‘Composing for Western instruments and gamelan’ by referring to something he calls the ’three Ts’: timidity, timbre and tuning. By ’timidity’ he seemed to mean a dimension of fear versus daring, when writing for gamelan, which he instanced by playing the opening snatch of Harjito’s bagpipe piece ‘Sekaten’. His point being, I think, that Indonesian composers are not timid when it comes to innovation!
Guest musician Pak A.L. Suwardi then gave an inspiring talk about his approach to composition, showed some slides of the Gamelan Gentha, a set of self-constructed experimental instruments, and played an extract of another recent project including his own instruments, called I think ‘Planet Harmonic’. Many of his comments resonated very strongly with me, particularly in reference to composing for a particular context.
Aris Daryono’s presentation of his work was slightly hampered by a laptop disaster which meant he could not bring recordings for us to hear. However, he did present a page from a fully notated score for a piece for flute and gender. He talked about his efforts to have the music which he writes for Western instruments and gamelan presented in straight concert settings, rather than being automatically programmed into some sort of ethnomusicological ghetto. Having recently managed to get a laptop piece performed as part of a regular concert programme, and not automatically placed into the ’electroacoustic’ concert, I have a sort of sideways sympathy for the point he makes.
Clive Wilkinson then talked a little about some of his experiences composing for gamelan, including playing us a snatch of his ‘Spindrift’ from Manchester. I wrote about this piece at the time, and have in fact been invited by Clive to take part in a performance on Sunday, which will be an interesting experience.
A great first day: a refreshingly non-academic atmosphere overall. No-one has so far presented a ‘paper’ at all, which I miss only a very little bit.
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April 30, 2012
Our first session today was the fascinating tale of the Dutch group ‘Babar Layar’, as researched by Maria Mendonça. It’s a story worthy of Hollywood: a group of Dutch teenagers who decided to construct their own gamelan under the Nazi occupation, going on to become a key influence on gamelan in Europe and the States. There’s a clip of them playing at an Eistedfodd in Wales in 1953 (about 1'50 into that clip).
After Maria’s session I took a break, and missed what seems to have been one of the best workshops of the conference ‘The Song of the Gong: teaching Javanese gamelan to the early-years with reference to Kodály, Dalcroze & Alexander’ by Nikhil Dally. I gather this was a very grounded, embodied, vocal approach to teaching basic gamelan cycles.
Over lunch we had ‘a concert of contemporary music for chamber gamelan ensembles, with electronics flute, banjo and vibraphone’. The standout piece was undoubtably Robert Campion’s ‘Gendèr Study 3’. The idea of making a ‘study’ for this complex and hard to master instrument makes perfect sense: a tightly structured, sparky piece, performed with great focus and intensity by the composer himself.
Jon Hughes, John Jacobs and Charlotte Pugh had collaborated on a piece which seemed to comprise a layer of devised loops and fragments, recorded and diffused over an ambisonic rig, combined with live ?improvised rebab from Charlotte and planned ostinato material from John on gender paneruus and Sundanse drums. This worked well for me, particularly the rhythmic energy of the piece.
Aris Daryono’s piece for two sarons wrung a large number of different ideas from the basic idea of imbal: perhaps too many ideas? Ellen Jordan had devised a collision between the traditional American tune Wayfaring Stranger and Wilujeng, with voice, rebab and banjo. A good idea, with perhaps an over-fiddly execution.
Daniel March’s ‘Pieces of Five and Three’ and Symon Clarke’s ‘Three Exits’ were attractive and carefully written, but perhaps a little abstract for my taste.
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April 23, 2012
From Thursday of this week to Monday of next I’m going to be at the Gathering of the Gamelans in York. This event is part academic conference, and partly a performative celebration of gamelan in the UK, most particularly the 30 years that Gamelan Sekar Petak has been at the University of York.
For the last couple of months, gamelan groups all over the UK have been rehearsing both separately and collaboratively towards ‘Lokananta, Gamelan of the Gods’. This will be a wayang kulit, an all-night shadow puppet play in the Central Javanese style, under the direction of dhalang Matthew Isaac Cohen. To translate dhalang as ‘puppeteer’ is about as misleading as translating wayang as ‘shadow puppet play’: both descriptions are accurate, but neither captures the breadth and depth of the form. Over the course of approximately seven hours, the dhalang has the responsibility for creating, leading and performing a multi-modal piece using puppetry, song, dance, and the voice, encompassing everything from high philosophy to low humour, from archaic texts in high Javanese to the most contemporary of references.
This concert in York represents a very rare opportunity to see a complete wayang performed in English. I attended a number of performances in Java, which were fascinating but impossible to follow in detail without a knowledge of the language. (One exception to this was a performance by Ki Purbo Asmoro’s with live translation into English by Kitsie Emerson: a two-hour video of one of these is available here, with at least some of the translation visible).
The musical direction for this project has been undertaken by one of the UK’s most pre-eminent gamelan musicians, John Pawson, himself a York graduate. Both Matthew and John are keen to keep some surprises up their sleeves, so I’d better not reveal too much! Suffice to say that the Scottish Gamelan (made up of members of Naga Mas and Gado-Gado from Glasgow, and a group from Aberdeen University) will have something very culturally distinctive to offer during our segment of the show. And it ain’t shortbread. (Or whiskey. Or tartan. Or golf.)
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April 20, 2012
I’m having two new pieces performed at the Plug festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland next week. The first is called Dr Mueller? Dr Mueller!? Oh, boy :( and is a postlude to Spiricom, the third piece in Gordon McPherson’s 2007 trilogy Ghosts. The ‘spiricom’ was a psuedoscientific electronic device built by a couple of cranks in the 1980s, who convinced themselves that with it they could hear and talk to dead people including, supposedly, a certain ‘Dr Mueller’.
The piece is for clarinet and acoustic laptop: by which I mean a laptop with no additional amplification, transforming the sounds of the clarinet, to be played by Fraser Langton. This one is in Plug 1, the Monday lunchtime concert.
The second piece is on Wednesday evening: The Black Rain again involves laptop and live instruments, this time five players from the Scottish Ensemble through a SuperCollider patch, more on that one below.
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March 19, 2012
After the success of the ‘The Seventh Voyage’, I have high hopes for my next two laptop-and-acoustic-instruments pieces, both to be performed at Plug 12 in a month’s time. Today I’m working on ‘The Black Rain’, which is for five players from the Scottish Ensemble - two violins, viola, cello and double bass - and live processing in SuperCollider. Here’s the (rather long and convoluted) programme note:
‘When the last trace of the rocket’s presence, a whitish haze, had been absorbed by the atmosphere, when the wandering sandy waves gradually began to cover up the naked rock of the ground, at the same time filling in the deserted digging spaces – only then, much later, did a dark cloud gather in the west. Hovering low above the ground it pushed closer, grew, encircled the landing area with a threatening arm. There it remained, motionless.
As the sun was about to set, a black rain fell on the desert.’
‘The Black Rain’ takes its title from the first chapter of Stanis!aw Lem’s 1967 science fiction novel ‘The Invincible’, in which a mighty spaceship and her crew are overcome by a race of microscopic mechanical flies, individually insignificant, but capable of joining together into a vast quasi-intelligent ‘cloud’: surely one of the first fictional works to speculate on the possibilities of nanotechnology, calling to mind such devices as the nanostats which inhabit Neal Stephenson’s 1995 novel ‘The Diamond Age’, and the EDust, or Everything Dust, in Iain M. Banks 2000 ‘Look to Windward’.
Aesthetically, ‘The Black Rain’ carries forward the composer’s ongoing reconstruction of the career of his fictional alter ego Edward ‘Teddy’ Edwards. Something like:
‘In 1959, Edwards created a work for string quartet (or quintet?) and five (or four?) taperecorders, incorporating radio equipment borrowed from Aldermaston, where he was at the time employed as an engineer on the ill-fated Blue Streak missile system. Working from his original sketches, I have replicated the piece using the music programming language SuperCollider, with the addition of a reconstructed lost (?) part for double bass.’
In terms of musical devices, ‘The Black Rain’ represents, through self-quotation, a critique of a group earlier works of mine (‘smir’, ‘4thought’, ‘5lipside’ etc), all of which float angular melodies across polymetric rhythmic frameworks, usually according to some quartal scheme, and usually, it would seem, in roughly the same key.
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March 8, 2012
I’m happy to say that my collaboration with pianist Silviya Mihaylova The Seventh Voyage, for two pianos and laptop, has been given pride of place as the closing work in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s piano festival.
The concert is at 1300 this Monday 12 March, in the Guinness Room. Tickets are available from the RCS box office, although, confusingly, they still have the wrong concert listed on the website https://boxoffice.rcs.ac.uk/, it’s billed as ‘Piano and Strings’. Tickets are £7/5.
Update also on the programme, all piano musice: Haydn Sonata in E Major, Liszt Spanish Rhapsody, Enescu Pavana and Silvestri Baccanale.
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February 10, 2012
I’m working on about three new pieces at the moment. The second of these is a collaboration with pianist Silviya Mihaylova on a shortish work for piano and laptop. The piano part is kind of done: Silviya took my sketches and added some ideas of her own. Apart from that, I have a program note, and some programming:
The title of this piece is taken from Stanisław Lem’s 1971 science fiction comedy classic ‘The Star Diaries’. In ‘The Seventh Voyage’ the hero of the stories, hapless cosmonaut Ijon Tichy, finds his rocket trapped in a loop of time. His attempts to repair the ship’s rudder are continually frustrated by the appearance of younger and older copies of himself:
“Just a minute,” I replied, remaining on the floor. “Today is Tuesday. Now if you are the Wednesday me, and if by that time on Wednesday the rudder still hasn’t been fixed, then it follows that something will prevent us from fixing it, since otherwise you, on Wednesday, would not now, on Tuesday, be asking me to help you fix it. Wouldn’t it be best, then, for us not to risk going outside?”
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Look, I’m the Wednesday me and you’re the Tuesday me, and as for the rocket, well, my guess is that its existence is patched, which means that in places it’s Tuesday, in places Wednesday, and here and there perhaps there’s even a bit of Thursday. Time has simply become shuffled up in passing through these vortices, but why should that concern us, when together we are two and therefore have a chance to fix the rudder?!”
from Stanisław Lem ‘The Star Diaries’ – Chapter 1 ‘The Seventh Voyage’
Lots under the hood, but here’s the front page of the pd patch so far:
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