Partly Cloudy, 64° F
The hypnotic, orotund tones of Gamelan, a venerable musical tradition from Indonesia that employs gongs, drums and metallophones, now resonates in University seminar rooms.
Related Stories
Stepping carefully in their stocking feet, the musicians thread their way among the array of low-lying gongs, drums, and metallophones and lower themselves cross-legged onto the floor. Lifting their padded mallets, they begin to play. The ringing sound of the metal bars, punctuated by the dry slap of the drum and the gong’s shimmering resonance, come together in a gentle, unhurried rhythm, a flowing narrative that seems to capture the miraculous within the pulse of the everyday.
Creativity through cerebration
Contemporary composer Kay Rhie hasn’t had many watershed musical moments. The romantic ideal of a composer “deeply entrenched in creative epiphanies,” she admitted on a recent damp spring afternoon, is “not my story.”
