Gamelan Kusuma Laras
Art Center · New York, New York, United States
About Gamelan Kusuma Laras
The gamelan that Kusuma Laras plays has a New York history of its own. The set of bronze instruments was made for the Indonesia Pavilion at the 1964 to 1965 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows and stayed in the city afterwards. The ensemble now rehearses and performs on it at the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia on East 68th Street, which gives the building an unusual double life: a diplomatic mission through the working day and a rehearsal hall for a full Javanese orchestra in the evening.
Kusuma Laras has been running for around three decades and works in the classical court repertoire of Central Java, the tradition associated with the palaces of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Programmes cover instrumental music, dance, and wayang kulit, the shadow puppet theatre for which gamelan provides the score. Numbers shift with the occasion, from five to eight players for chamber pieces up to more than twenty five for full orchestral works.
Direction comes from I.M. Harjito, a Javanese musician who has taught at Wesleyan University, with Anne Stebinger and Jon Rea as co-directors, both American musicians trained in classical Javanese music. Membership mixes American and Indonesian players, which is common among gamelan groups in the United States, where university ensembles have been a main route of transmission since the 1960s.
The group performs well beyond the consulate. It has appeared at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a number of universities, and it takes reception and wedding engagements. It also runs workshops and klenengan sessions, a Javanese format in which musicians play through the repertoire in an informal setting rather than as a staged concert.
Rehearsals begin at 6:00 pm at the consulate address, but dates move, so the ensemble asks people to check its published calendar before turning up.
Address
Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia, 5 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065, New York, New York, United StatesContact
- Website: https://kusumalaras.org
Category
Indonesian Art Center in United States
More Indonesian Art Center in United States
- Gamelan Sekar Jaya Berkeley, United States — Art Center