Hive Gamelan Madu Sari

• 1Ganjil10:27
• 2Stream06:59
• 3Bonessongs13:07
• 4Leaky Heaven05:48
• 5From Heaven to Earth05:04
• 6Symmetries09:03
• 7Nang Ning Nong05:13
• 8Full Fathom Five05:53
• 9Inquietude15:36
• Total Runtime01:17:10

Info for Hive

“Hive” is constructed around three things: the group’s provocative shadow theatre production Semar in Lila Maya, the full possible instrumental range of the Javanese gamelan, and vocals up front in the mix. In fact those unfamiliar with the world of Javanese gamelan music may be surprised at the prominence of the glorious solo and choral singing in much of it.

Ben Rogalsky’s compositions illustrate all three threads beautifully. His song From Heaven to Earth deftly draws on two music genres for inspiration: the old-fashioned syncretic Indonesian folk style kroncong and the more recent Javanese campur sari. Behind Rogalsky’s backing of gamelan allied with mandolin, cello and string bass, are the warm and communicative vocals of the composer, Jessika Kenney and the chorus. The same vocal group is heard to good, though very different, effect in English composer Alec Roth’s eerie Full Fathom Five.

The Javanese born and long-time west coast resident Sutrisno Hartana's two elegant compositions are the most Javanese in feeling and conception of the works presented here. “Hive” is a rich and rewarding musical experience that challenges as well as it soothes – and magically manages to do it on several cultural levels at once.

Andrew Czink
is a composer/pianist based in Vancouver. He is co-director of earsay productions (a CD and concert producer) and performs in the contemporary music duo Structural Damage. His primary instrumental training was of a classical bent, with excursions into jazz and popular forms early on, and later exposure to various Asian and African musics. His compositional education was heavily rooted in the contemporary avant-garde, with primary compositional studies taking place at SFU with Barry Truax, Martin Bartlett and Owen Underhill, in addition to shorter intensive compositional workshops with Peter Maxwell-Davies and Louis Andriessen. He has been performing with Gamelan Madu Sari since 2005, and composed the evocative opening section of Semar’s Journey. His music has been performed and broadcast throughout Europe, New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and Canada where he has received numerous awards, grants, and commissions. His recent electro-acoustic compositions “Iron Emerald” and “Strike Slip” have been presented throughout Europe, Australia, and North America in festivals, concert series, and broadcasts. His most recent piece, “Palimpsest,” was commissioned by Vancouver Co-op Radio's Media Arts Program and has been released on Audio Art Volume 6. He is currently the Academic Director of Audio Programs at The Art Institute of Vancouver, and is completing a Master's Degree at SFU, with his research focusing on auditory experience. Website: www.earsay.com.

Sutrisno Hartana
is an interdisciplinary performer/composer in the Javanese tradition, a vocalist and a master performer on a wide range of gamelan instruments as well as a choreographer, dancer, and shadow puppeteer. Since 1999 he has taught gamelan at the School for the Contemporary Arts at SFU and has been the leader of Gamelan Madu Sari. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta in 1992, completed his MA in Ethnomusicology at UBC in 2006, and is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Victoria. He has toured with Indonesian performing groups to Europe and East Asia, created his own dance dramas, and worked with senior Javanese choreographers such as Bagong Kussudiharjo and Didik Nini Thowok. In 2004 he was recognized as an official court musician of the royal palace of the Paku Alaman in Yogyakarta. His gamelan composition “Sangaskara” appears on the CBC CD The Neighbourhood. He was co-creator and principal puppeteer of Gamelan Madu Sari’s multimedia shadow play Semar’s Journey (2007), and organized their tour of Indonesia that summer, as well as co-creating Semar in Lila Maya (2008). He has also taught and performed in Toronto, Ottawa, Hawaii, and Seattle, collaborating with Trichy Sankaran, Jarrad Powell (Gamelan Pacifica), I Nyoman Wenten, Hardja Susilo, and Widiyanto.

Kenneth Newby, BA, MFA (SFU)
is a media artist, composer-performer, educator, interaction designer, and audio producer whose creative practice explores the use of technology to enable media performances and installations that are rich in aural and visual nuances. His work is widely presented in concerts, festivals, and radio broadcasts throughout Canada, Asia, Europe, and the USA. These works include compositions of media performance, electro-acoustic and acoustic music; interactive computer systems for live performance and installation; software tools for composition of music and animation; new composition for Javanese and Balinese gamelan ensembles; interdisciplinary collaborations with composers and artists in various disciplines (film, video, dance, theatre, poetry, shadow play); and participation in improvisational ensembles. He is currently engaged in ongoing collaborations with Aleksandra Dulic in the creation of a series of works combining live animation, performance documentary, and music techniques for performance presentations. This work has been presented at the Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival's Interactive Futures, the Belef Festival in Belgrade and the Elektra Festival in Montreal 2006. Kenneth's recent works include the interactive audiovisual installations in a thousand drops... refracted glances, exhibited at the Beall Center for Art and Technology in Irvine, California and in Genoa, Italy (2008), One River (running...) at the Surrey Art Gallery (2005), and Pasiphae's Desire, presented at The Academy of Electronic Arts CeC & Cac in New Dehli (2007). Kenneth and Aleksandra provided live animation for the Marathonologue project presented during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver; their interdisciplinary performance work Triaspora was presented at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 2009; and their visual music work Symmetry was selected as a finalist in the Punto y Raya animation festival in 2007. A founding member of Gamelan Madu Sari in 1986, Kenneth has also been studying and playing Balinese gender wayang (shadow play music) since 1984. His discography includes two solo CDs: Ecology of Souls (Fathom) and Sirens (City of Tribes). His composition for gamelan orchestra and chorus, “Dreams He is a Ball of Fire... Or a Hummingbird,” is included in Gamelan Madu Sari’s New Nectar CD, and as composer and computer videographer Kenneth co-created their multimedia shadow plays Semar’s Journey and Semar in Lila Maya. Kenneth is on faculty in Media Arts in the Visual Arts department of the University of the Fraser Valley. Website: www.ecuad.ca/~knewby.

Michael O'Neill
is a composer/musician originally from the Shaganappi Escarpment area near the Bow River in Alberta. He studied with Gilles Tremblay in Montréal, and with Martin Bartlett, Rudolf Komorous and Barry Truax at SFU, where he obtained his MFA. He is a founding member of Gamelan Madu Sari and performs both Javanese gamelan and Balinese gender wayang. His composition Lessons of the Garden: Forest and Field for Sundanese gamelan and harmonically adapted bagpipe was performed by the Evergreen Club Gamelan at the Newfoundland Sound Symposium. “Lessons of the Garden: Gate Path Waterway” appears on Gamelan Madu Sari’s New Nectar CD, and he co-created the intercultural shadow plays Semar’s Journey and Semar in Lila Maya. Michael also performs with and composes for Maja Gender, a Vancouver/Winnipeg gender wayang quartet, as well as his own highland bagpipe ensemble Mearingstone. His recording of new music for bagpipes and percussion, Ontophony, was released in 2006 on Songlines. He has also written works for Silk Road Music, bass clarinetist Lori Freedman, Winnipeg's Stirling Pipe Band, poet Sheri-D Wilson, Simon Fraser University Pipe Band, and choreographers Crystal Pite and Karen Jamieson. He was Project director and contributing composer in Gamelan Madu Sari’s recent work Marathonologue, which was presented in the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, and is presently working on two gamelan-related projects: Beledrone and Ventriloquial Investigations.

Mark Parlett
is a musician/composer/performer involved in contemporary and traditional gamelan-based music and interdisciplinary performance. Parlett has studied the gamelan and performance traditions of Central Java and Bali in Indonesia and Canada, collaborating with some of Indonesia’s top musicians, composers, dancers and visual artists in creating concert works for gamelan and theatre. From 1991-1992 he studied at ISI (Indonesian Institute of the Arts) in Solo on an Indonesian government scholarship, and between 1986 and 1992 he studied drumming, mask and ritual in Bali with the renowned puppeteer, musician, and dancer I Made Sija. As a director of Gamelan Madu Sari (1993-2001) he realized a number of artistic exchanges with artists from Indonesia, and he has continued to conduct public workshops with visiting Javanese musicians. His piece “Intimate Distance” appears on New Nectar, and he co-created Semar’s Journey and Semar in Lila Maya. His newest gamelan piece “Twinings” preimiered in 2009. In the 1980s he was a creator-member of the Vancouver electroacoustic ensemble Hextremities and world music group Cymbali. Some of his musical/theatrical collaborations have been with Vancouver Moving Theatre, Arts Umbrella Theatre and The Songbird Oratorio with Savage Media, and he has performed as a percussionist, bassist, flautist and rebab player with Vancouver musicians Pepe Danza, Jonathan Bernard, Andrew Czink, DB Boyko, Kenneth Newby, Michael O’Neill, Randy-Raine-Reusch and others. A current project is his actuelle jazz trio Bufflehead with Andreas Kahre and Alex Varty.

Ben Rogalsky
is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who has performed and studied music throughout Canada, the USA, Europe, South-East Asia, Japan, and Central America. Ben writes, records and tours extensively with roots band The Breakmen (guitar, mandolin, vocals), who were nominated for two Canadian Folk Music Awards in 2009. He also composes and performs Javanese gamelan with Gamelan Madu Sari (which he joined in 1993), and collaborates with his brothers Matthew and Luke as Rogalsky Bros. Ben is active creating music for dance and theatre, earning a Jessie Richardson award nomination in 2006 for his original music. He has recorded for the CBC and Radio Indonesia, and released two independent CDs with The Breakmen and one with the Flying Folk Army. In 2008 he collaborated with Uzume Taiko, composing a program of new works for taiko drums and a variety of instruments including electric mandolin and clawhammer banjo as well as vocals, and toured Europe, BC, Atlantic Canada and the Northwest Territories with them. Ben is also in demand as an educator, teaching at workshops in Canada and the USA. He was a co-creator of Semar's Journey.

Alec Roth
was born in England of German/Irish descent. He founded London’s Royal Festival Hall Gamelan Programme and the South Bank Gamelan Players in 1988. As a composer he is best known for his collaborations with the Indian writer Vikram Seth, which include the opera Arion and the Dolphin and numerous songs, song-cycles and choral works. Songs in Time of War (2006), for voice, violin, harp and guitar, was composed for the tenor Mark Padmore, and is now available on the Signum Classics label. The CD also includes the song-cycle Chinese Gardens, the music of which was inspired by a visit to Vancouver’s own Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

Booklet for Hive