The NCH Gamelan Orchestra


Posted 2 weeks ago in Music

Since their inception in 2014, the NCH Gamelan Orchestra have blossomed, with an impressive array of high-profile concerts and collaborations to their name.

‘Gamelan’ is the term used to describe the traditional ensemble music of Indonesia. The music consists predominantly of percussive instruments, particularly metallophones (played with mallets) and a set of hand-drums called kendhang. Gamelan is commonly played in traditional ceremonies, as well as entertainment for some modern events. More traditionally, it accompanies religious rituals, ceremonies, dance-drama, and traditional Indonesian or puppet theatre.

Only ten years down the line, NCH Gamelan Orchestra now boasts a thriving community of gamelan practitioners, who consist of students, professors, teachers, administrators, amateurs and industry professionals. Their new album Kyai Jati Roso marks their ten-year anniversary, and is a highly absorbing, hypnotic work. Christian Wethered caught up with founder and MD Peter Moran to talk gamelan, the new album, and the orchestra’s legacy in Ireland.

 

To the uninitiated, what is gamelan? What does it mean to you? From where does your interest originate?
The word “gamelan” broadly refers to an orchestra of bronze percussion instruments which can be found in many different parts of Indonesia. Perhaps the most recognisable and visually striking instruments of the gamelan orchestra are the great gongs and bronze bars of all sizes, but you will also find wooden xylophones, hand drums, string instruments, bamboo flutes and voices too. Over thousands of years, different regions of Indonesia have developed their own distinct gamelan instruments, playing styles, and sub-genres. The style that I teach is from Central Java.

 

I first heard gamelan music while studying music in UCD, and it was just so tantalizingly different from anything I had heard before, it really compelled me to dig deeper. I first got the opportunity to play the gamelan for myself when I moved to York, England, where I studied with the highly influential gamelan director, Neil Sorrell, while completing my PhD in Composition.

 

The NCH Gamelan Orchestra boasts a long-standing, not to say prestigious, relationship with the Sultanate of Yogyakarta in Java. How did this come about?

When I began looking for ways to set up a gamelan in Dublin, first I spoke with the National Concert Hall, who offered to establish a permanent gamelan room, and then I spoke with the Indonesian Embassy, who in turn reached out to the palace.

I soon learned that the Sultan of Yogyakarta, Hamengkubuwono X (known as HBX), is a great champion of the arts, and he has been known to gift entire gamelan orchestras to prestigious cultural institutions around the world. So when he heard that Ireland’s National Concert Hall was seeking to establish a gamelan orchestra here in Dublin, he generously offered to have the entire orchestra of instruments built and shipped over. Not only that, but he then offered to come to Ireland with his personal orchestra of palace musicians to perform a traditional gamelan naming ceremony in the National Concert Hall! That was a really special occasion, and a night to remember.

That relationship has continued over the years, as we have given concerts in Indonesia, and welcomed Artists-in-Residence to Dublin, and just this year, the sultan sent the director of his Palace Musicians to re-tune our entire gamelan, which was a really fascinating process to behold. Then our players all pitched in to help to polish every bronze instrument in the orchestra, so now it all looks and sounds brand new!

 

Did you always intend to set up a gamelan orchestra over here? How difficult was it to assemble and train the right kinds of musicians?

It wasn’t my original intention at all! But the whole thing just kind of took on a life of its own. I remember feeling like everyone involved was just willing this thing to happen – the NCH, the embassy, the palace – they were all so supportive and so keen to bring this together, I simply had to see it through. I was even brought over to Java for advanced training in the Yogyakarta gamelan style, which was a very exciting time!

The first gamelan musicians in Dublin were gathered together through the UCD School of Music with the support of ethnomusicologist Prof. Jaime Jones. We began with a core group of her postgraduate students, and we put out a public call for others to join us. I remember when the Journal of Music posted this news on Twitter, it was met with excited comments from Indonesia and around the world.

 

How did Kyai Jati Roso come about? What was the significance of the title?

The initial idea for the CD was simply to produce a historical artefact – so much has happened in the ten years since the sultan’s visit and the naming ceremony, I wanted to tell that story, and to show where gamelan music in Dublin has come in that time.

The name Kyai Jati Roso is the name which the sultan bestowed on the instruments during the naming ceremony. It actually has several layers of meaning. One way of translating it is “The Honourable Gamelan of the Essence of Authenticity”, which represents both the authentic craftsmanship of the instruments, and also the authentic gamelan tradition which I have been tasked with maintaining and passing on here in Dublin.

And an alternative translation, which the sultan used, would be “The Honourable Gamelan of Pure Consciousness”. With this, he hoped that this gamelan music would bring people together, helping us to overcome our differences, and to honour our shared consciousness.

 

The album feels predominantly traditional, though the innovative ‘Embat’ touches on jazz-fusion. How did you strike the balance between old and new – or, indeed, between Indonesian and European or Irish traditions?

The CD is a portrait of our first ten years, and Embat kind of bookends our entire journey. Embat was originally commissioned for the gamelan’s naming ceremony in 2014, so it was an important piece to feature on our 10th Anniversary CD. The piece requires the musicians to play traditional gamelan rhythms while hammering on the metal instruments. This represents the sound of the gamelan being built. This was all based on my own field recordings of a gamelan builder’s workshop in Java in 2013, which can also be heard on the album.

The British jazz trumpeter and gamelan composer Byron Wallen came to Dublin in 2023 to perform with his own gamelan fusion group, and that’s how we began our collaboration with him. I sent him our studio recording of Embat, and he recorded four different takes of an improvised trumpet solo for me to choose from. But they were all so good, I decided to use all four of them! That’s how we ended up with a quartet of trumpets all improvising and harmonising over the original gamelan track.

When Byron came back to Dublin in 2024 to perform the CD launch with us, the Indonesian Ambassador, being a big jazz fan and a sax player, actually asked if he could get up on stage and jam with us! So the final moment of the CD launch was this amazing improvised duet between Byron Wallen and His Excellency Pak Desra Percaya both jamming over the NCH Gamelan Orchestra, it was such a cool moment… it even made the TV news back in Indonesia!

 

You’ve played a number of concerts to audiences ranging from Dublin to Java. I’ve read that your most significant event was at the International Gamelan Festival in Java in 2018? Can you describe what happened?

That was an intense experience! We were totally unprepared for the scale of this event. Instead of performing at a small arts theatre, as we were expecting, we were brought to a massive open-air arena filled with thousands and thousands of chairs. At the top of the arena were three huge stages laid out in a semi-circle and flanked by massive TV screens. The sight of it all just completely overwhelmed us.

When we took to the stage, our performance of the traditional gamelan repertoire was very well received, and I was especially excited that my own composition, Embat, got a really great response. But it was the grand finale that really shook us. We had prepared two lively songs to finish the set, but unbeknownst to us, the first song was so wildly popular, that we would never get the chance to play the second.

Once we started singing that famous chorus, the crowd erupted. The audience of thousands began cheering enthusiastically as people leapt to their feet and started dancing and singing along. We were stunned. My eyes slowly scanned across the vast arena trying to take it all in. As we finished the song, I simply had to turn to the ensemble and “We are not going to follow that – just bow and get off the stage!”

The response was so great, I spent the rest of the night being interviewed by reporters and bloggers from all over – YouTube channels, college newspapers, national magazines, and BBC Indonesia! It was a wild experience. The song was called Lagu Prau Layar, and after we’ve had such a journey with it, of course we had to include it on the CD!

Ireland’s National Concert Hall Gamelan Orchestra’s debut album Kyai Jati Roso is out now.

Words: Christian Wethered

Images: Mark Stedman

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