another eye opens

I’m a little behind on blogging because I was preoccupied with rehearsing for and performing two concerts December 11 and 12 with Gamelan Kusuma Laras. It was a lot of work but fun and thrilling to make music with a group of talented musicians. Javanese gamelan is unusual and exotic music for most Western listeners, which my friends who attended confirmed. You can check it out for yourself on this YouTube video of our opening number. It’s very much an ensemble performance without soloists or an obvious place to rest your attention. You can see me next to the gong, the guy in the blue batik shirt. It was a special treat to have Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed in the audience Sunday afternoon. Lou nodded off almost immediately, but Laurie was fully present and engaged. They left at the intermission but Laurie e-mailed me the next day to say, “It was gorgeous. Meditative but a lot of detail.”

This entry was posted on December 17, 2010 at 11:24 am and is filed under good stuff online.