You are invited to join our Balinese Community Gamelan!
Twice weekly Balinese gamelan classes for intermediate, advanced, and adventurous beginner gamelan music players.
In Nusantara Arts' twice weekly Balinese rehearsals we teach and practice basic to advanced Balinese gamelan percussion music skills and methods in an inclusive and fun environment! This is a class appropriate for intermediate and advanced gamelan musicians as well as adventurous beginners. The sessions are led in a Balinese community style.
We focus on playing a variety of Balinese gamelan compositions on our "Semar Pegulingan" gamelan set and practice for upcoming performances. You don't need to be a performer to join this class. Beginner musicians will be helped along the way, but the learning is slightly more passive in nature than the Beginner 6 week class. People who want to learn in this traditional environment should have some kind of prior musical background, but it is not a requirement for joining for the more adventurous. For those new to music we generally recommend taking the 6 week Beginner course before joining our community group.
Cost:
Our Class fees are based on a quarterly (3 month) class schedule with Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall sessions.
Sessions are sliding scale. You may also choose to pay on a monthly or yearly basis. Or if you want to come to just one class choose the one time option:
Quarterly Sliding Scale:
Generosity Registration: $500
Standard Registration: $250
Accessible Registration: $150
Subsidized Registration: $90
If you want to pay by check, just let us know, there is no need to register here in that case.
Schedule:
Rehearsal Every Sunday from 3pm-5:30pm
Secondary rehearsal and individual practice time available Tuesday 7-9pm
Bi-Monthly rehearsals with Gusti Komin are generally required for participants: Sundays 2-6pm
Quarter Schedule:
Winter Quarter: January-March
Spring quarter: April-June
Summer Quarter: July-September
Fall Quarter: October-December
Class Fees:
Class Fees are sliding scale to ensure people with any economic status may participate.
For participants age 13 and higher. Beginner Balinese Gamelan class or other prior experience required.
Teacher: Gusti Komin
Gusti Komin, one of the finest Balinese musicians and teachers of his generation will be visiting Buffalo as our classes guest artistic director with funding from the Cullen Foundation. Originally from the village of Pengosekan, Bali, Komin spends academic semesters in the US teaching at MIT, and Dharma Swara.
Performing - Community gamelan is the gateway to performing with our performance troupe. Nusantara Arts performs many small and medium sized performances a year in Western New York, and even further! It's really fun being involved in ensemble music making, and practicing for performances at interesting venues and often items with incredible guest artists. Performing is optional, not all people who participate in community gamelan perform, it's your choice!
Our Instruments: 7 tone “Semar Pegulingan” style gamelan from Bali are an older “traditional” gamelan ensemble originating in the 1800’s. Unlike Central Java where many types of music are performed on one set of instruments, in Bali you have many different types of ensembles that play specific repertoires. In the Early 20th Century the Semar Pegulingan repertoire and ensemble had disappeared from much of the contemporary Balinese music scene. This ensemble type fell out of favor with the introduction of the “gong kebyar” ensembles. Many Semar pegulingan sets were melted down to create kebyar sets long ago. There is somewhat of an revival of the repertoire in recent times with modern “Smaradana” gamelan sets being built able to play these older songs as well as new Semar Pegulingan sets being built.
