My primary research focus is contemporary art music in Indonesia, there known by the term musik kontemporer. My dissertation aimed to explain how musik kontemporer came by its distinctive profile, encompassing both traditionally-based and Western-oriented composers, and to describe its prevailing cultural dynamics. To date, my articles and chapters have focused on the work of traditionally-based composers from Surakarta, Central Java. I am now turning to musik kontemporer’s Western-oriented side, starting with the case of mid-century composer Amir Pasaribu, a precursor to the scenes that arose in the 1970s. His somewhat tragic story presents an unusual challenge: how to deal critically and honestly, but at the same time sympathetically, with difficulty and even failure.
Other scholarly activity has led me beyond my own rather specific research focus. As part of the revival of the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, I co-organized the conference Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music. For this I conscripted my partner-in-crime Andy McGraw, who joined me as co-editor of the ensuing volume published by Cornell University Press. This project deepend my ongoing engagement in my teaching with the the whole of Indonesian music. In a different direction, I co-edited with Gavin Lee a special issue on Global Musical Modernisms for the journal Twentieth-Century Music.
Currently, while in Yogyakarta, Indonesia as a Fulbright Scholar teaching at Gadjah Mada University, I am observing both gamelan-related activity, and the diverse range of creative music-making, laying the groundwork for future research that will examine a broader range of musical modernities, as well as the relationship of music to social and cultural hierarchy. I am also gaining greater insight into the ecosystem of knowledge production around music in Indonesia, both within and beyond academia, to inform practical efforts toward a more fully decolonial future for Indonesian music studies.
“Global Musical Modernisms,” special issue co-edited with Gavin Lee, Twentieth Century Music 20/3 (2023).
Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music, co-edited with Andrew C. McGraw (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022).
“When Is It Modernism? A Lesson from Indonesian Musik Kontemporer,” in “Global Musical Modernisms” (2023).
“(Re)Producing Knowledge: Southeast Asian Music and Academia,” Bulletin of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University (Fall 2022).
“Audible Knowledge: Exploring Sound in Indonesian Musik Kontemporer,” in Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music (2022).
“New Directions in New Music among the Islands.” Bulletin of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University (Spring 2016).
“Of Arcs and De/Re-centerings: Charting Indonesian Music Studies,” in Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field of Indonesian Studies, edited by Eric Tagliacozzo (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2014).
“A Different Kind of Modernism: The Sound Exploration of Pande Made Sukerta,” in Performing Arts in Postmodern Bali: Changing Interpretations, Founding Traditions, edited by Kendra Stepputat (Herzogenrath, Germany: Shaker Verlag, 2013).
“Indonesian Experimentalisms, the Question of Western Influence, and the Cartography of Aesthetic Authority,” in conference proceedings of Beyond the Centres: Musical avant gardes since 1950, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
“Orchids (and Other Difficult Flowers) Revisited: A Reflection on Composing for Gamelan in North America.” The World of Music, 47/3 (2005).
“Cosmopolitan, Nativist, Eclectic: Cultural Dynamics in Indonesian Musik Kontemporer.” (Wesleyan University, 2014).
“‘as time is stretched . . .’: Theoretical and Compositional Investigations of Rhythm and Form in Javanese Gamelan Music.” (Wesleyan University, 2001).