Southeast Asian percussion workshop

Monday 9 May 3 pm – 7pm Kulintang workshop with Susie Ibarra at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory
Tuesday 10 May 9.30 am – 1.30 pm Javan gamelan workshop at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory
Tuesday 10 May 9 pm Electric Kulintang, Susie Ibarra and Roberto Rodriguez in concert at the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove
Wednesday 11 May ore 9.30-13.30 Javan gamelan workshop at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory
Wednesday 11 May , ore 18.00 Gong Wisnu Wara gamelan in concert at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory
 
In collaboration with the Indonesian Embassy to the Holy See, the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory and the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, Venice, the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies has organised a series of events featuring music from Southeast Asia. The aim is to illustrate the Central Javan gamelan and the Filipino kulintang in terms of theory, practice and performing techniques. These important Southeast Asian traditions are both based on gong chimes: sets of metal or bronze gongs used as melodic instruments to perform elaborate polyphonic music. The ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood has described the musical traditions of this world region as “gong-chime cultures”. And in fact instrumental ensembles in Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and the Philippines always included these kinds of instruments in their orchestras. The music is characterised by a special scale system (completely different from the Western tempered scale), special improvised performing and compositional techniques, a particular role for the timbre full of harmonics in the high register and a cyclical rhythmic concept with the accent on the last beat of the cycle.
The gamelan workshop is mainly intended for students at the Venice conservatory, who will be able to acquire academic credits. Widodo Kusnantyo, a resident musician at the Indonesian Embassy to the Holy See, Rome, and a teacher at the Yogyakarta ISI (Academy of Music and Dance), Java, and the whole gamelan of the Gong Wisnu Wara will illustrate the performing techniques and compositional procedures of traditional Javan music with special reference to the styles once used at the Javan courts and now taught in Indonesian music schools.
In a four-hour meeting with students, the percussionist Susie Ibarra will illustrate both traditional kulintang performing techniques (music played on a set of gong-chimes from the Philippines) and her own special style of combining traditional and contemporary music through the use of electronics.
 
At the end of the workshops the Gong Wisnu Wara gamelan and Susie Ibarra will perform in two concerts: one of traditional and contemporary Javan music and dance (with original music by Kusnantyo) and the other of “electric kulintang”, a crossover of traditional and electronic sounds, illustrating a new cultural and artistic project.
 
 
The Gong Wisnu Wara gamelan was founded in February 2005 at the prompting of the Indonesian Embassy to the Holy See and the then ambassador S.E. Bambang Prayitno as part of the Embassy’s activities in promoting Indonesian culture in Italy. Gong Wisnu Wara continues to perform thanks to the support of the current ambassador S.E. Suprapto Martosetomo. The gamelan is made up of Indonesian and Italian musicians, conducted by Widodo Kusnantyo, teacher in residence at the Embassy, according to a specific Indonesian government programme for promoting the arts. In Java he teaches dance at the Yogyakarta ISI (Academy of Music and Dance).
 
Susie Ibarra is a Filipina-American percussionist and composer of jazz, experimental sounds and contemporary music. She is acclaimed for her highly expressive technique and capacity to combine various styles and influences, such as kulintang, gamelan, the spoken word and electronics.
Ibarra learned to play piano as a child and was a drummer in a punk band while still at high school. In 1980, she took part in a performance of Sun Ra, which sparked off her interest in jazz. Susie Ibarra has performed with celebrated musicians such as the David S. Ware Quartet, the Matthew Shipp Trio, William Parker, Assif Tsahar, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Derek Bailey, Trisha Brown, Tania Leon, Wadada Leo Smith, Yo La Tengo and Thurston Moore
Currently she plays in the Susie Ibarra Trio (together with Jennifer Choi and Craig Taborn) and in the Electric Kulintang duo with her husband Roberto Rodriguez.
 
 
 
To enrol, please apply to:
Istituto Interculturale di Studi Musicali Comparati
Fondazione Giorgio Cini onlus
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore- 30124 Venezia
Tel: 041 5230555- e-mail: musica.comparata@cini.it