26-29 August 2008

Terengganu International Gamelan Festival – Kuala Terengganu

Southbank Gamelan Players presents two programmes of new British music for gamelan in a festival featuring gamelan ensembles from Malaysia, Java, Bali, Japan and UK.

Saturday 7 June, 7.30 pm, 2008

Southbank Gamelan Players presents an evening of Javanese music ancient and modern, from the regal to the raucous. Featuring guest dancer Ni Madé Pujawati. Pre-concert talk and demonstration from 6.30 pm. Part of the University of Durhams’s Musicon concert series.

Thursday 29 May – Sunday 1 June

British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB

Over four days, Southbank Gamelan Players, working with puppeteer Matthew Cohen, presents a shadow puppet performance of the entire (!) Ramayana, from the birth of Ravana to the fall of Alengka. The show is part of the British Library’s Ramayana exhibition, running 16 May – 14 September 2008, which also includes gamelan workshops.

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.

Queen Elizabeth Hall in June 2003, 2004 and 2005.

RAMAYANA!

dance-drama trilogySouth Bank Gamelan Players
Sunarno Dance Company
Sunarno Purwolelono choreographer

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.