NCH Gamelan Orchestra: concert and recording

The NCH Gamelan Orchestra is the professional gamelan orchestra operating out of the National Concert Hall. I like to think that they are the bloated late period prog rock version of gamelan while our group are the scrappy young punks, but in practice I suspect that they are The Clash and we are Dumpy's Rusty Nuts. They played a concert on the evening after ours and I went along to it because I can't get enough of the gamelan. They had a few pieces that they played gadhon style, which means they use a stripped down ensemble that is pretty much just the soft instruments (AKA the hard-to-play instruments, viz. the gambang (wooden xylophone like thing), the suling (flute), the rebab and other things people play if they think they're great). The gadhon pieces included two that I have played in full line-ups, Ladrang Moncer and Ladrang Mugirahayu, but they were pretty much unrecognisable in this format.

The concert also had dancers for a couple of pieces, which genuinely was great. I'm curious about the role of dance in Javanese gamelan and would like to know more about it. The concert finished with a gending, which is a new type of gamelan piece for me. Like the types of gamelan piece I am familiar with (ladrangs and lancarans), this went through cycles, but the gending cycles are much longer. I was talking to one of the players (who also performs with our group) and she was saying that they only cycled through it twice but it still was around 20 minutes long.

I also recently picked up a copy of Confluence, an album the NCH Gamelan Orchestra released digitally last year, with a physical copy finally becoming available in recent months. There are no gendings here and not much in the way of music from the Javanese tradition, with this instead being a mix of new compositions in non-standard styles and attempts to combine western instruments and the gamelan, with cellist Martin Johnson and uillean piper Mark Redmond joining the ensemble. Mixing western and gamelan instruments is not easy, because the tunings are very different and the notes do not line up. I think they managed it here though, and despite my status as a fusion-sceptic I found this to be an enjoyable listen, but I was a bit irked that the physical release contained no information on the individual tracks (you need to go to Bandcamp for that). You can check out the recording for yourself here.

images:

NCH Gamelan Orchestra (RTÉ: Gamelan on - bringing the sound of Indonesia to New Music Dublin)

Confluence (Bandcamp)