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1.
Gangsa (Toledo performance) 09:09
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2.
NightWaters 09:05
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Notasi gamelan available upon request. The score for NIghtWaters was originally published in "Balungan" in 1986, the magazine of the American Gamelan Institute. http://www.gamelan.org/balungan/
3.
Gendér Improvisation 05:52
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4.
Kempul Shapes 05:05
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5.
Gangsa: extended gong section improv 07:11
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6.
Autumnsong 04:49
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7.
Bonus Track: Gangsa (Ann Arbor performance) 09:33
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about

Gangsa
Volume 1

New Forms in Experimental Music (series)
Vol 3: New Music for Javanese Gamelan Instruments

I began playing Javanese gamelan in 1979, with the University of Michigan gamelan group Kyai Telaga Madu (Venerable Lake of Honey), directed by Professor Judith Becker. I played with the gamelan ensemble in Ann Arbor through 1985, when I received a Fulbright grant, as a composer, to go to Indonesia to study gamelan.

During the year I lived in Java, I studied much more than the traditional music; I also made many concert recordings, which I am gradually digitizing from cassette, studied batik, gathered materials including numerous books on the arts and poetry; and I got involved with the new music for gamelan scene at the school for the traditional arts in Surakarta, where I lived. I got to know several students and professors, and attended many concerts of new music and dance.

When I got back to the US, I continued to be involved with gamelan for several years, eventually playing with the gamelan ensemble at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, directed by R. Anderson Sutton. I eventually entered graduate school at UW-Madison, in ethnomusicology an folklore/anthropology; I was the gamelan Teaching Assistant for awhile, too. Nothing improves your own ability at something like having to teach it to others.

Eventually, I moved to another city, and became less involved in performing gamelan due to lack of availability.

Yet all those years of being closely involved with this music left a permanent mark on me as a composer/performer, a profound influence on my playing and my conception of improvised music. I can trace elements in my own music compositions, as well as my style of jazz improvisation, directly to gamelan forms, structures, and scales.

Since I am primarily a composer and experimental musician, it was inevitable that I would begin to approach the gamelan instruments in a compositional and experimental manner. All the music on this album is a product of those musical explorations, ranging from gendhing composed in a more-or-less traditional style, to adventurous experimental music using the gamelan instruments as pure sound-sources, not wedded to the traditional music theory or techniques of playing.

"NightWaters" and "Autumnsong" are composed music in more or less traditional gamelan structural forms.

"Gangsa" was co-written and performed with Stuart Hinds, my musical partner in these explorations. "Gangsa" means "gong-sounding" in Javanese. The piece is a composed structured improvisation for pelog and slendro instruments, played individually and together, using both traditional and extended playing techniques. "Gangsa extended gong section improv" takes one section from "Gangsa" and stretches it out, involving slow and sustained changes over time. "Gendér Improvisation" and "Kempul Shapes" similarly are composed structured improvisations using both traditional and extended playing techniques.

credits

released July 3, 2022

Written & Performed by Arthur Durkee & Stuart Hinds
Produced by AD
Executive Producer: Dr Judith Becker

© 1984, 2022 Arthur Durkee Arts. All Rights Reserved.

Tracks 1, 3, 4, 5, 7: AD/SH played nstruments of Kyai Telaga Madu (Venerable Lake of Honey), the gamelan of the University of Michigan Javanese Gamelan Ensemble, Dr. Judith Becker, Director

Track 2: Faculty & Students of ASKI (ISI) Surakarta, Jateng, Indonesia, including the composer (this was during my Fulbright year studying gamelan as a composer in Java)

Track 6: University of Michigan Javanese Gamelan Ensemble, Dr. Judith Becker, Director

Album artwork & design by AD.

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Arthur Durkee Ann Arbor, Michigan

Arthur Durkee is a composer & songwriter who records & performs on Chapman Stick, bass, analog modular synths, bamboo & wood flutes, keys, frame drums, and voice. He has won awards for composed, notated music as well as for his recordings, & is a published poet, & designer & illustrator. ... more

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