Research residency
Polyphème invites Balinese composer Dewa Alit to create a new repertoire for this atypical ensemble.
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.
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.
Production
Pantcha Indra
Détours de Babel ; GMEM ; Musiques Démesurées
Drac ; Spedidam
Dewa Alit
composer
Born into a family of artists in the village of Pengosekan in Bali, Dewa Alit grew up immersed in Balinese music from an early age. His father Dewa Nyoman Sura and older brother Dewa Putu Berata were his most influential gamelan teachers. He began performing at the age of 11, and by 13 was playing in his village's adult group, Tunas Mekar Pengosekan. From 1988 to 1995, he played in the internationally renowned Ubud village Gamelan Semara Ratih, and toured internationally.
As a composer, Dewa Alit is widely recognized as the leading figure of his generation in Bali. His Geregel (2000) was so influential that it was the subject of a 50-page review in Wayne Vitale's Perspectives on New Music - Winter 2002. One of his compositions written for the Boston-based gamelan group Galak Tika, Semara Wisaya, was performed at New York's Carnegie in 2004, and another, Pelog Slendro, was presented at the Bang on a Can Marathon in June 2006.
His compositions for non-gamelan ensembles include music for MIT's Gamelan Electrika, Talujon Percussion (USA) and Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt, Germany).
Dewa Alit founded his own gamelan group in 2007, Gamelan Salukat, seeking a more direct way to express his approach to new gamelan music and performing on a new set of instruments tuned and designed by himself.
As a collaborator, Dewa Alit has worked with musicians and dancers from all over the world. These include a contemporary theater production, Théâtre Annees Folles (director: Alicia Arata Kitamura, Tokyo), butoh dancer Ko Murobushi, contemporary dancers Min Tanaka and Kaiji Moriyama, and noh master Reijiro Tsumura.
Dewa Alit was the gamelan director in Evan Ziporyn's opera A House in Bali with his Gamelan Salukat and toured with Bang on a Can All-Stars in the USA in 2009 and 2010. He has been regularly invited to teach and compose outside Bali, notably at the University of British Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Helena College in Perth.
Polyphemus
gamelan
Polyphème brings together eight members of the Puspawarna gamelan and percussionist Wassim Halal, who also received oral training on the derbuka, but who has been working for several years on new ways of playing and expressing himself, placing his instrument at the heart of his research(Bey.Ler.Bey/Revolutionary birds/H).
Gamelan Puspawarna, a group of mostly percussionist members, has been creating and disseminating Balinese gamelan music for over ten years.
composition
composed of
derbuka