Past Diary Highlights

Notable performances by Southbank Gamelan Players have included:

• Gamelan Wayang
  Ballroom floor, Royal Festival Hall, Saturday 8 September 2007, 10:30 P.M.
  

  An all-night session of storytelling, shadow-puppetry and music celebrates the return of the gamelan to Southbank Centre. Javanese master puppeteer Ki Purbo Asmara, vocalist Sukesi, Southbank Gamelan Players and Associate Artist Rahayu Supanggah come together to create this special event. Based on an episode from the Mahabharata epic, the play follows the Javanese tradition of incorporating contemporary characters and themes, including a specially commissioned puppet of the Royal Festival Hall itself. All-night Javanese shadow-puppet play with puppeteer Ki Purba Asmara.

  
  

  

• RAMAYANA!
  dance-drama trilogy
  
  South Bank Gamelan Players
  Sunarno Dance Company
  Sunarno Purwolelono choreographer
  
  Queen Elizabeth Hall in June 2003, 2004 and 2005.
  Further performances were given in Italy (2004), Manchester, and Aldeburgh Festival (2005).

  The Ramayana, an epic Hindu poem in Sanskrit, is one of the world's great stories, and a wellspring of South Asian culture - told and retold over the past two millennia in innumerable versions and languages across the continent. In Java it is frequently told through shadow-puppet plays or dance-drama.

  During a three year collaboration with choreographer Sunarno Purwolelono, the Southbank Gamelan Players and the Sunarno Dance Company presented the Ramayana cycle as a trilogy of Javanese dance-dramas. Ten dancers portrayed the classic Hindu tale of the Abduction of Princess Sinta by the demon king Rahwana, and Prince Rama's quest for Sinta with Hanuman the monkey warrior.



• Friday 27 February 2005 - BBC Maida Vale Studios, Delaware Road, London, W9
  
  Swans Reflecting Elephants
  Southbank Gamelan Players & BBC Symphony Orchestra
  
  A week of school and community based activities (23 - 27 February 2004) led by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Southbank Gamelan Players culminated in 2 performances at BBC Maida Vale Studios on Friday 27 February when members of the BBC SO and Southbank Gamelan Players gave the world premiere of Geoff Poole's Swans Reflecting Elephants, as well as performing works by John Adams, Debussy and Alec Roth.


• May - June 2002: British tour with Javanese dance company Wahyuning Kuswala, including the sacred Srimpi dance which was originally restricted to the inner circle of the royal courts.


• March 2002: A tour in France (Lyon, Bourg-en-Bresse, Grenoble) of new compositions by French composers François-Bernard Mâche and Jean-Yves Bosseur jointly commissioned by GRAME and the Cité de la Musique (Paris) for gamelan, vocalist and midi keyboard, and performed by members of the Southbank Gamelan Players and of the Cité de la Musique gamelan. The programme also included the first performance of Bone Shadows by Symon Clarke.


• Autumn 2001: the Southbank Gamelan Players appeared at the Settembre Musica Festival in Turin with the Javanese dance company Wahyuning Kuswala. The players were joined by nine dancers from the Kraton palace in Yogyakarta to give, with the Sultan's blessing, a rare performance of the sacred bedhåyå dance.


• Queen Elizabeth Hall, 16 July 2001 as part of the SBC Rhythm Sticks Festival- with dancers: Didik Bambang Wahyudi and Kenneth Tharp
  Including Alec Roth's Songs and Dances from the Tempest, choreographed by Kenneth Tharp


• the 50th anniversary of the Royal Festival Hall in 2001 - Southbank Gamelan Players celebrated with a newly revised version of Honeyed Thunder by Alec Roth.


• New Music '98 - ISCM World Music Days at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester - a programme of contemporary gamelan music written or arranged by composers from the UK, Europe and America, including the first performance of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Waiting for the Wind, specially commissioned by the SbGP


• a BBC Prom concert with musicians and dancers from STSI (Academy of Indonesian Performing Arts, Surakarta, Central Java) in 1998.


• WOMAD 1997 - a contemporary Javanese Wayang Kulit (shadow-puppet play) with CIPA (Contemporary Indonesian Performing Artists)


• performances with the Mark Morris Dance Group at the 1996 Edinburgh International Festival, featuring the music of American composer Lou Harrison


• the music-theatre work The Knight with the Lion commissioned with the help of the Arts Council of England from composer Adrian Lee and librettist Matthew Sweeney, and premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1995


• MTV Unplugged with Björk - an arrangement of the song One Day, for gamelan, tuba and tabla