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