Composition to accompany the dance piece Atelier 2320: Upending choreographed by Jumay Chu and dancers, along with Sao, computer-animated choreographic art by Tong Yang-Tze. I performed one part on Javanese rebab live, along with a composition (created using Ableton Live) of samples and prerecorded tracks of rebab, gender, kenong, kethuk, and Thai ching. Musically, the piece explores the idea of pelog as nine-tone system accommodating transpositions of five-tone modes, joining mostly traditional melodic idiom with sequences of harmonies based on voice-leading.
Video recording of performance 7 March 2020, at Kiplinger Theater in the Schwartz Performing Arts Center, Cornell University.
Composition for Javanese gamelan instruments, string quartet, and fixed media. The original version of the piece, a section of my MA thesis project as time is stretched. . ., superimposed two elements—a slendro and perhaps sweeter version of the archaic gendhing Monggang, and the inexplicably distorted recording of the patriotic song “Rayuan Pulau Kelapa” that would play on Indonesian national radio before the news—subjecting the latter to time-stretching analogous to the expansion of cycle in the former. This reworking added string quartet, a rendition on viola of the melody of macapat Pangkur, and the gender part played with another archaic gendhing, Kodhok Ngorek.
While the plan for the composition as a whole is my own, I am greatly indebted to all the performers, and especially Darsono Hadiraharjo, for their creative contributions. As is apparent from the video, the score is quite minimal, something between the extremely specific notation common in new music (that is, new music in the Eurological tradition) and the balungan notation used in gamelan. Borrowing from that Nusalogical tradition, the details were worked out in rehearsal, in collaboration with the performers. (For more on the Eurological/Nusalogical distinction, inspired by a similar distinction made by George Lewis, see my article “When is it Modernism?”)
Performed by Christopher J. Miller, Cornell Gamelan Ensemble, Momenta Quartet (Emilie-Anne Gendron, Alex Shiozaki, Stephanie Griffin, Michael Haas), and Darsono Hadiraharjo, 7 November 2018, Barnes Hall, Cornell University.
Improvisation by CAGE (Kevin Ernste, Tim Feeney, Annie Lewandowski, and Christopher J. Miller) on sculptures by Harry Bertoia in the collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. Recorded in the Museum in August 2015, and originally released on the album CAGE | Bertoia (Weighter Recordings WR07). For photos and videos, see the page on Tim Feeney's site.
Collaborative composition by Sekar Anu (A. L. Suwardi, Andy McGraw, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Christopher J. Miller, I Nyoman Dewa Supenida, Ida Bagus Widnyana, and Pande Made Sukerta). The title, from Pande Made Sukerta, translates as virtual, illusion, or hallucination, but is also ayam (chicken) backwards, in reference to our guest performers.
Composed for and performed at the Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival, 16 July 2024.
Compostion for two Vietnamese dan bau and Javanese gamelan instruments. Premiered 29 January 1998 by Khac Chi, Ngoc Bich, Christopher J. Miller, Michael O’Neill, and Ben Rogalsky, at the third and final concert of the series Further East, Further West, which I produced. Subsequently recorded for New Nectar, the debut album by Gamelan Madu Sari (Songlines SGL 2404-2, released 2004).