Beginning Javanese Gamelan Ensemble Fall Concert

Thursday, December 5, 2024 at 6:00pm
World Music Hall

Free

Wesleyan students, faculty, and staff can RSVP on WesNest.

Beginning students from Wesleyan’s Javanese Gamelan Ensemble, under the direction of Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Sumarsam MA ’76 and University Professor of Music Harjito, present a fall concert of the classical music of Central Java.

Since 1983, Wesleyan has owned one of the finest sets of gamelan instruments in the world, a set from Yogyakarta, Indonesia. A magnificent orchestra of colorful bronze gongs and metallophones, wooden xylophones, drums, bowed- and plucked-string instruments, flute, and voices, the gamelan has accompanied feasts, ceremonies, and dances since the 12th century. The Wesleyan gamelan study group had been in existence since the late 1960s, before the Center for the Arts opened in the fall of 1973. Students in the ensemble focus on the direct, hands-on experience of performing Central Javanese gamelan music, augmented by occasional discussions and the showing of documentary films.