Percussia Plays The Diversity Of Queens
By Victoria Hernandez

Queens-based Percussia, a contemporary chamber music ensemble with percussion as its driving force, will celebrate the magical Indonesian tradition of gamelan music in an upcoming free concert at 2 p.m. Sept. 6 at the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, 100-01 Northern Blvd. in Corona.

Percussia will explore Indonesian music at a free concert at Langston Hughes library.

The program, titled "Inspired by Gamelan," is a "campuran" - the Indonesian word for fusion or mixture - of Western instruments and Indonesian music. Played on percussion, flute, harp and viola, the event features seven eclectic works - including a world premiere piece - by modern Western composers who were influenced by this intricate percussion instrument from Java and Bali.

A gamelan is an orchestra of percussion and other instruments, such as xylophones, drums and gongs, that are built and tuned to stay together. Gamelan music originated in Indonesia on the islands of Java and Bali as royal court music and is often thought to have mythical powers. The gamelan, which is usually hand-forged and made of bronze, is still a central element in many Javanese and Balinese rituals.

The concert will kick off with a world premiere performance of "Variasi-Ombak," composed by Matthew Welch for flute, viola, harp and two percussionists. This somber set of pieces extends Welch's focus on a dialectic between musical devices found in Indonesian gamelan - in this case, Central Javanese and antiquated Balinese Saih Pitu (seven-tone) gamelans, such as Gambang and Luang - and Celtic music, specifically in the piece piobaireachd. The choice of instrumentation touches both realms of disparate music traditions such as the Irish flute, the fiddle and the celtic harp; or when viewed from the other side of the world, the suling, the rebab, and celempung , respectively. The metallic and wooden percussion instruments further evoke the sound world of gamelan, notably the specific forms mentioned above that combine logam-logam (metals) and kayu-kayu (woods).

The concert concludes with "Nagoya Marimbas," an intricate piece for two marimbas by Steve Reich, who was recently called "our greatest living composer" by The New York Times. In the mid 1970s, Reich studied two forms of Balinese Gamelan - Semar Pegulingan and Gamelan Gambang - at the American Society for Eastern Arts in Seattle and Berkeley, California, which broadened his rhythmic and timbral palette. "The repetitive, syncopated, interlocking rhythms influenced his overall compositional style," says Percussia's Artistic Director Ingrid Gordon. " This piece in particular uses interlocking, syncopated rhythms, the same you would find in Balinese music." Reich says that "Nagoya Marimbas," written in 1994, is somewhat similar to his pieces from the 1960's and '70s "in that there are repeating patterns played on both marimbas, one or more beats out of phase, creating a series of two part unison canons. However, these patterns are more melodically developed, change frequently and each is usually repeated no more than three times, similar to my more recent work."