Gamelan Son of Lion, New York's new music gamelan, will present a program of music and shadow puppets by Brooklyn composers and other ensemble musicians on Friday evening November 15th at the Williamsburg Art and Cultural Center.
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The program will include our post-Halloween shadow puppet play "Wayang Hantu Hancur (getting rid of ghosts)" using the traditional flat leather puppets of the central Javanese wayang kulit tradition performed by OBIE award-winning dhalang (puppeteer) Barbara Pollitt, with script by Barbara Benary and music by Jody Kruskal.
Musical selections on the program will include: the ensemble's collective composition "9-11, a Memorial Suite" by Barbara Benary, David Demnitz, Daniel Goode, Laura Liben and David Simons; the New York premier of "Sekat" for gamelan and bagpipe by master musician I.M. Harjito; and pieces by California percussion composer Bill Alves.
The shadow screen will again be put to more contemporary use with scenes from Lisa Karrer's multimedia work-in-progress "Woman's Song" with visual projections by Jenny Lynn McNutt and music by Ms. Karrer.
Since 1976 Gamelan Son of Lion has performed and presented programs
of new works for the instruments of the Javanese gamelan percussion
orchestra in the greater New York area, and has toured internationally.
The ten person composers' collective performs on metallophones
(xylophones), knobbed gongs and drums, supplemented by voices
and other instruments. The metal instruments are tuned in two
unique non-western scales called slendro and pelog, and are built
in Indonesian village style using steel keys, cans and hubcaps,
together with traditional drums and gongs. Please visit the ensemble's
website:
http://www.gamelan.org/sonoflion
This event is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Made possible in part by grants from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Independence Community Foundation and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Mar