Gamelan Nua + Mike Nielsen and Ellen Demos
Gamelan Nua with special guests Mike Nielsen (microtonal guitar) and Ellen Demos (voice)
Tickets: €7
This concert will present original music for Javanese gamelan written by Irish composers Susan Geaney and Anna Murray and a new collaborative work composed by the ensemble. Alongside these will be featured newly-devised improvisations with special guests Mike Nielsen (electric guitar) and Ellen Demos (voice), including a dramatic reimagining of the classical Indonesian work Ladrang Pangkur.
Gamelan Nua is an ensemble of Irish composers writing and performing new music on the National Concert Hall’s unique collection of gamelan instruments. Gamelan is the traditional music of Indonesia. Our beautiful orchestra of bronze gongs was built on the island of Java as a gift for the people of Ireland from the Sultan of Yogyakarta.
Mike Nielsen, described by the Sunday Tribune as “perhaps the most truly original voice in Irish jazz”, earned his PhD in the research and development of a new microtonal guitar which he will showcase in this performance, contrasting the standard Western pitches against the Javanese tuning of the gamelan. He has been collaborating in this research with virtuoso jazz singer and improviser, Ellen Demos, who has also trained to sing in these microtonal tunings.
Programme:
Rndr (Anna Murray)
Opus Ji (Gamelan Nua)
Improvisation for Gamelan, Voice and Microtonal Guitar (Nielsen, Demos, Gamelan Nua)
Ladrang Pangkur (Trad. arr. Nielsen, Demos, Gamelan Nua)
Halowaves (Susan Geaney)