On Monday, 15 July, at 8 pm, the Kirtimai Cultural Centre will host a concert by ENSEMBLE NIST-NAH, playing traditional gamelan music from Java and the Indonesian islands.
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ENSEMBLE NIST-NAH is a gamelan and percussion ensemble led by the France-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie. The ensemble's music is inspired by traditional Indonesian and Southeast Asian music, but the members strive to distance themselves from dry academic discourse or exoticization. 〰️ The group creates constantly evolving and relevant music with percussion instruments and resonant metals - utilizing gongs, singing bowls, and bells as melodic and harmonic material and polyrhythmic/polyrhythmic possibilities. 〰️ The ensemble's music draws on its leader Guthrie's experience of travelling in Indonesia and his familiarity with various forms of gamelan music, from the majestic suspended temporality of the Javanese gamelan Sekatan to the heady, thunderous repetition that accompanies the Javanese trance ritual of the Javanese ritual of the Jathilan, and to the vibrancy of the contemporary Balinese composer, Dewa Alit, and his gamelan, Salukat. 〰️ Guthrie expands the genre's palette to explore gamelan instruments and to pay tribute to his love of this complex but elemental percussive music: he considers the percussive works of Roscoe Mitchell, the multi-directional improvisation of Henry Threadgill, and the cross-cultural adventures of Trevor Watts, Michael Ranta and Mike Cooper. 〰️ ENSEMBLE NIST-NAH is made up of 8 musicians from eclectic and mixed backgrounds. As well as performing, the band members also run workshops and teach gamelan, having taught at universities, prisons, squats, schools and community centres.
