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Gamelan Pacifica presents Jessika Kenney, vocalist and composer Friday, September 25st, 2009, 8:00pm Presenting new compositions by Jessika Kenney, and including a performance of A Soedjatmoko Set by Lou Harrison featuring Ms. Kenney as vocal soloist. With gamelan performers: Phil Cali, Cynthia Dillard, Michelle Doiron, Stephen Fandrich, Christine Feagin, Ted Gill, Jessika Kenney, Deena Manis, Stephen Parris, Jarrad Powell, Jesse Snyder, and guest performer, violist Eyvind Kang. Tickets available at the door ONLY: $5 to $15 dollar sliding scale. On Friday, September 25th at 8pm at the The Chapel Performance Space, Gamelan Pacifica presents a concert of contemporary music. Gamelan Pacifica is one of the finest ensembles performing experimental and traditional gamelan music in the U.S. This concert features A Soedjatmoko Set by American icon Lou Harrison, and music by vocalist Jessika Kenney, including Bahar Amad (based on a poem of Mowlana Rumi) and Her Sword (based on a poem of Attar), which also feature the mercurial viola stylings of soloist Eyvind Kang. Gamelan Pacifica is an ensemble which demonstrates the multi-generational legacy of gamelan music outside of Indonesia, and this concert is no exception. The ensemble has been directed by Jarrad Powell, composer and Cornish professor for over 25 years, and includes many stellar Seattle musicians who play in many other musical forms as well, including Stephen Fandrich (Seattle Harmonic Voices), Cynthia Dillard (the Golden Tree Story), pianist Adrienne Varner, and many others with strong musical and philosophical affiliations to Indonesian and experimental musics. The first part of the program features the music of Jessika Kenney. Ms. Kenney has been singing with Gamelan Pacifica for the last 15 years, at times travelling between Seattle and Indonesia in exploration of the artistic synergy that exists between these places. Jessika is also known for her performances in the U.S. with Ostad Hossein Omoumi in the area of Classical Persian music. Her music combines at a deep structural level aspects of Persian and Indonesian traditions, particularly in the sense of tonality. Many of Ms. Kenney's compositions are based on intensive, almost exegetical readings of classic Sufi poetry in Persian, Arabic, and Javanese, and were premiered in May at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The second part of the concert features a Lou Harrison piece for gamelan, soloist, and mixed chorus entitled A Soedjatmoko Set (1989). The piece was commissioned by Peter J. Poole as an offering to the Soedjatmoko family of Indonesia. Soedjatmoko was a journalist, activist and intellectual who played an important role in the formation of Indonesian independence. He represented Indonesia at the United Nations in debates that resulted in recognition of Indonesian independence in 1949, and focused on fostering awareness of the human dimension in developing Indonesia, encouraging both Asians and outsiders to look more carefully at the village folkways they would modernize. Harrison's own concern with the environment and world peace is expressed in a number of his pieces. Here he utilizes an image from the Ramayama to invoke the threat of earth's destruction and the senselessness and injustice of war. Gamelan Pacifica will be recording this piece this fall with soloist Kenney for a new CD of the music of Lou Harrison which will be released by New World Records in the fall of 2010.
Bios Gamelan Pacifica. Originally formed in 1980, Gamelan Pacifica was among the innovators in developing the resources to create and perform gamelan music in the U.S. Gamelan Pacifica has performed extensively in the Pacific Northwest, as well as Canada and other parts of the U.S and is among the finest ensembles devoted to the performance of music for gamelan in the U.S. It is an active and adventurous ensemble, with a reputation for creating diverse productions merging traditional and contemporary musical forms with dance, theater, puppetry, and visual media. Visiting artists have included some of the most notable artists of Indonesia, including Purbo Asmoro, Didik Nini Thowok, Sri Djoko Rahardja, I Made Sidia, Endo Suanda, A.W. Sutrisno, Goenawan Mohamad, and Tony Prabowo. Gamelan Pacifica has been a guest performer on the Smithsonian Institute's Festival of Indonesia, New Music Across America Festival, Vancouver New Music Society, On the Boards, Walker Art Center, Performing Arts Chicago, and many others. Gamelan Pacifica has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, Arts International, and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Gamelan Pacifica is currently supported in part by sustaining funds from the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and 4Culture. Gamelan Pacifica is a professional ensemble-in-residence at Cornish College of the Arts and is directed by Professor Jarrad Powell.
Composers Bios
Jessika Kenney is a vocalist and composer whose public appearances include the performance of Classical Persian music and the vocal music of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra. Born in 1976 in Spokane, Washington, she grew up in the punk scene reading Kathy Acker and learning to improvise with her voice. In 1994 she moved to Seattle to study voice with jazz great Jay Clayton at Cornish College of the Arts, and there got involved with Gamelan Pacifica and the creative works of composer and Cornish professor Jarrad Powell, including the recording of his vocal music, "The Stonehouse Songs" which developed in part through the dance theater work of Mary Sheldon Scott/Jarrad Powell Performance. Since 2005 Jessika has studied Classical Persian music with world-renowned ney player and vocalist Hossein Omoumi. Her interest in the sound of language and in poetry has led her into studies of the Indonesian, Javanese, and Persian languages, with a special interest in the atmosphere of the music of the language and the vocal colors associated with these languages. With Ostad Omoumi she has worked on the radif and tasnifs associated with this area of music, and done in-depth study of the classical poetry, which can be said to be the foundation for this music, particularly in the Isfahan school. "Voices of Spring", a composition based on the poetry of Attar was recorded in 2007 by the Hossein Omoumi Ensemble including Jessika Kenney. Lou Harrison is one of the most important American composers of the 20th century. Born in Portland in 1917, he won a particular reputation for his percussion music, his experiments in intonation, and his synthesis of East and West in his music. A pupil and friend of Henry Cowell, whose interest in other musical traditions he shared, he also profited from a close study of the work of Charles Ives. He collaborated with John Cage in San Francisco, studied under Schoenberg in Los Angeles, wrote under Virgil Thomson in New York, continuing a varied career and the development of his many gifts as a poet, artist and musician. Harrison has been cited as the quintessential West-coast composer, reflecting in his work the region's embrace of diverse opinions, its fascination with Asia and Latin America, and its devotion to open space. He was a pioneer in the development of gamelan music in the U.S. and the most prominent American composer of music for that idiom. |
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