Search - Jody Diamond :: In That Bright World: Music for Javanese Gamelan

Jody Diamond
In That Bright World: Music for Javanese Gamelan
Genres: International Music, Special Interest, Classical

Track Listings (6) - Disc #1
1. In That Bright World
2. Hard Times
3. Gending Chelsea
4. Kenong
5. Bubaran Bill
6. Sabbath Bride

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CD Details

All Artists: Jody Diamond
Title: In That Bright World: Music for Javanese Gamelan
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: New World Records
Original Release Date: 1/1/2009
Re-Release Date: 6/1/2009
Genres: International Music, Special Interest, Classical
Styles: Chamber Music, Historical Periods, Classical (c.1770-1830)
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 093228069829

Synopsis

Product Description

Jody Diamond (b. 1953) is a composer, performer, and scholar who has specialized in music for Indonesian gamelan for close to forty years. Her compositions are played internationally; as a vocalist, she performs both experimental and traditional American and Javanese music. Diamond notes: "I composed these pieces for an American audience. My intention was to create for my own community a gamelan music that they could hear with a sense of musical feeling and connection. By using songs that would be familiar to them and could be followed through the musical journey of each piece, I also hoped to reveal gamelan structures, treatments, and variations that had evolved in the tradition of origin, thus creating not only a singularly American experience, but a deeper appreciation for the gamelan itself as a creative orchestra."

CD Reviews

Western Melodies, Eastern Instruments

Dr. Debra Jan Bibel | Oakland, CA USA | 07/21/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Having learned how to play gamelan from Jody Diamond in the early 1980s, I was curious about this recording and found a very curious album of her compositions, with her as vocalist. After all, she opens by singing Wayfaring Stranger and ends with a Jewish Sabbath song. There is even a quote of the Balinese Kecak Ramayana monkey chant. The musicians at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta, Central Java, do occasionally play old Western tunes, so it is not out of character for them to assist in this fusion. Therefore, these pieces involve Javanese instruments and we do hear the Javanese musical style of layered rhythms and musical idioms and accents, in much the same way as classical composer Lou Harrison was influenced by Indonesian music in creating an American gamelan and writing music in slendro mode. But we would not regard either as contemporary Indonesian music. What then about the music itself? It all seems to be a preliminary experiment: some interesting tracks, some silly, some too contrived. It is a curio, and for that it may be worthwhile to own."