Music ensemble: 'Kreasi Baru'

Music ensemble: 'Kreasi Baru'

I wanted to write to thank The Nusantara Chamber Orchestra for
such a wonderful cultural experience. Recently, the orchestra
performed my work Kreasi Baru (New Creation) at the Golden
Ballroom in Jakarta's Hilton Hotel. This starts out with gamelan,
then shifts to orchestra and percussion ensemble and finally
returns to gamelan at the end. Regardless of one's subjective
view of the merits of the piece, from the point of view of
cultural exchange and artistic growth, the process of putting
Kreasi Baru together was both rewarding and fascinating.

When Kreasi Baru is performed in the U.S.A., we use the same
performers to play both gamelan and the percussion ensemble, thus
the fusion is not so much in the simultaneous playing of the
gamelan and orchestra, but rather takes place within the
performer himself. It is through motivic development that the two
musics are brought together.

When we put the piece together in Java, however, we used
gamelan specialists from the Institute Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta
and percussionists from Akademi Musik Indonesia. Thus, the fusion
was in the working together (gotong royong) to solve artistic
problems such as different ways of feeling the beat and notating
music and playing together. This process proved very enlightening
as it highlighted the differences and similarities between the
two venerable music traditions.

ROBERT MACHT

Baltimore, USA