Klenengan: An All-Night Gamelan Performance

The Sumunar Gamelan Ensemble offers Northern Spark participants a traditional klenenan, or all-night music performance of traditional and contemporary Javanese gamelan music. Klenengan is not a concert per se, but a gathering of musicians playing for hours at a time, often through the night. The audience is an important component because the listeners and the musicians together make the event. For Northern Spark, we will play a number of ghending, the longest and most complicated of gamelan musical structures. These classical pieces can last for an hour and feature both slow, stately music and lively drumming with fast-moving interlocking patterns. The klenengan will also include new work by Joko Sutrisno, director of the Sumunar Gamelan Ensemble. The first half of the evening will feature several pieces choreographed by dance director Tri Sutrisno and performed by the Sumunar Dance Ensemble.

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