Seattle & Olympia, WA – On Friday, December 15, 2023 at 8pm in Seattle at 415 Westlake (415 Westlake Avenue N) and Saturday, December 16, 2023 at 7:30pm in Olympia at the Capital High School Performing Arts Center (2707 Conger Avenue NW), Emerald City Music (ECM) presents Inspired by Gamelan –– a concert program dedicated to Balinese gamelan, featuring Gamelan Gita Asmara, founded by Dr. Michael Tenzer and led by Artistic Director Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka, in the ensemble’s Washington State debut. Violinist and ECM Artistic Director Kristin Lee, percussionist Svet Stoyanov, and pianist Michael Stephen Brown will also be returning to ECM as featured performers. The first half of the performance will feature Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, III. Fast (1987), Claude Debussy’s Estampes For Solo Piano, L.100 (1903), and Varied Trio For Violin, Piano And Percussion by Lou Harrison (1987), followed by a 30 minute experience of the gamelan as the second half of the performance. The concerts are supported in part by the American-Indonesian Cultural & Educational Foundation.
Composers over the centuries found inspiration in folk music from around the world, and in the late 20th century, many composers found their influence in gamelan music from Indonesia. ECM presents an experience of the Balinese gamelan alongside three chamber music works that transform the indelible instrument into each composer’s own style and setting. Debussy paints with its harmonic color palette and common melodic shapes. Steve Reich lives within its rhythmic systems and poignant expression through repeated figures, while Lou Harrison captures its overall textures and tells an evocative story through the sense of gamelan’s coordinated interlocking parts. The concerts promise to transport audiences with the gamelan in both its urtext and re-textualization.
Of their upcoming Washington State performance debut, Gamelan Gita Asmara says:
“Gamelan Gita Asmara performs traditional and contemporary music of Bali, Indonesia, using a set of instruments called gamelan semaradana, imported from Bali. The group was founded in Vancouver in 1996 by Michael Tenzer, a Professor in the School of Music at UBC. It performs every year throughout British Columbia, and played an extensive tour of Bali in 2013. In these, our first concerts in Washington, we will present two early twentieth-century compositions by the celebrated composer Wayan Lotring, and premiere a new work, Sekar Ura, by our Artistic Director Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka.”
For the performance at 415 Westlake, audiences can enjoy ECM’s flagship “date-night experience,” which combines vibrant classical performance with an open bar, and a “wander-around” concert setting with no stage dividing the audience from the musicians. The second performance of the program in Olympia will take place at the Capital High School Performing Arts Center.
Emerald City Music (ECM) is the Pacific Northwest home for eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. Known for their casual environment combined with award winning artists, ECM has gained recognition from several high-profile publications like Seattle Times, The City Arts deemed ECM “the beacon for the casual-classical movement.” Unique to only ECM attendees are encouraged to wear casual clothes, enjoy the open bar and walk around in order to increase the satisfaction of each of the ECM concerts. The Seattle Times calls ECM’s programming “very different,” noting its “nontraditional atmosphere,” which often “doesn’t have a stage separating performers from the audience, and artists mingle with the audience during the intermission.”
This performance, and all of ECM’s Mainstage performances this season, will be recorded live and then made available on Emerald TV, ECM’s subscription-based streaming platform for performances and additional video content.
Read more here.
