The School of Music’s gamelan ensemble will perform with visiting Balinese guest director I Nyoman Windha
BYU Panoramic Steel and Gamelan Bintang Wahyu — helmed by director Darren Bastian and founding director Jeremy Grimshaw respectively — will transport campus audiences beyond western percussion traditions for an evening of “Global Rhythm” on Nov. 23.
“This is the first time that we’ve performed in this format emphasizing the non-western percussion ensembles,” said Grimshaw. “One of the draws of this concert is that you can see everything that’s happening on stage and everything that you hear. This is kinetic, energetic music, and it spans the sensory spectrum.”
BYU Panoramic Steel will showcase traditional music from Trinidad and Tobago as well as jazz-influenced music by American composers, while the gamelan ensemble will perform with visiting Balinese guest director I Nyoman Windha — a dream collaboration for Grimshaw.
“I started the gamelan group in 2008, and it was my goal all along to eventually have a Balinese artist come in and really teach it to our students,” said Grimshaw. “It’s been a highlight of my career to have one of the most highly respected Balinese teachers and composers establish this ongoing relationship with the School of Music.”
Grimshaw is also excited to extend this collaborative spirit to the Department of Dance as Windha’s wife — I Gusti Agung Ayu Warsiki — works with dance students over the course of the couple’s two-semester residency at BYU. Several of Warsiki’s students will perform with the gamelan ensemble on all three of their pieces, giving audiences a taste not only of Balinese music, but of the way it is traditionally presented.
“Collaborating between musicians and dancers is something that we can do at BYU, but it’s not something that’s built into how we operate like it is in Bali,” said Grimshaw. “The different strands of a performance — the music, the dance, the social component and the devotional — are never extricated from each other; they’re organically connected. On a fundamental level, this type of performance requires such an intense cooperation between performers. You have to learn to read each other’s faces and bodies and develop a kind of empathy with each other.”
Grimshaw hopes that both audiences and the student musicians performing in “Global Rhythm” will embrace this sense of community and learn from Windha and Warsiki’s approach to music, movement and interdisciplinary partnership.
“The thing that has always struck me about Balinese music is the cohesive community it creates,” said Grimshaw. “I didn’t grow up in this culture and am coming to it two or three decades late, but the depth of the connection there and the synergy between all the different components and performers is something we aspire to as musicians.”
Tickets and Show Details
Performance Dates and Times: Nov. 23 | 7:30 pm.
Location: de Jong Concert Hall
Price: $6-11
Tickets: Available in person at the BYU HFAC or Marriott Center Ticket Office, by phone at (801) 422-2981 or online at byuarts.com