Research residency

Formed in 2018 for the recording of one of the tracks on Wassim Halal's album Le Cri du Cyclope, Polyphème brings together 8 members of the Puspawarna gamelan and percussionist Wassim Halal. The result of this fertile encounter is a repertoire of original creations revolving around rhythm and time, in the form of a singular and daring dialogue between darbuka and Balinese gamelan. A series of off-track compositions and improvisations sown with haunting leitmotifs that invite the listener into a magnetizing whirlpool of sound.

Polyphème invites Balinese composer Dewa Alit to create a new repertoire for this atypical ensemble.
Dewa Alit is both a traditional gamelan musician and an internationally renowned composer of contemporary Balinese music. His music is complex and experimental, but also rooted in an oral tradition.

The interdependent relationships between instrumental parts and the extreme synchronization demanded by his music can only be envisaged and achieved by the collective listening and memorization of those who play it. The notations and diagrams used by the composer are more aids to memory than exhaustive fixed scores. 
It is in this way of conceiving music that the Polyphème project fits in, in these new stakes around contemporary creation in an oral and collective perspective of transmission.

The ambition of the project will be to find, beyond the simple meeting between several musical traditions, the collective construction of a common language, composed of new architectures and sound materials.
Mentions
Biography(s)
Polyphemus
Dewa Alit, Gamelan Puspawarna, Wassim Halal
Residence
Mon. Feb. 12 -- Sun. 18, 2024
Distribution
Dewa Alit
composition

Gamelan Puspawarna
composed of 
Jérémie Abt
Théo Mérigeau
Hsiao-Yun Tseng
Antoine Chamballu 
Raúl Monsalve
Christophe Moure
Krishna Sutedja 
Sven Clerx

Wassim Halal
derbuka
Useful links