AN all-night shadow puppet play with music played by performers from all over Britain will mark 30 years of Javanese music in York.
It will be the finale of a four-day major international symposium at the University of York about Javanese gamelans, which are ensembles featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, kendang drums, gongs, bamboo flutes, and bowed and plucked strings.
Called the Gathering Of The Gamelans, the event will take place at the university’s Roger Kirk Centre from April 26 and comes 30 years after the arrival of Gamelan Sekar Petak in York – an ensemble still active today in the university.
One of the organisers, Ginevra House, said: “York was the first university in the UK to have a Javanese gamelan, and many of today’s top British performers had their first experience of playing Indonesian music here.
To celebrate this anniversary, we wanted to bring the British – and indeed the international – gamelan community together, to share ideas and best practice, to learn together and, especially, to perform together.”
There are15 to 20 gamelan performers in the York area, mostly music students and ex-students who meet regularly to play new compositions and traditional music.
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