Richard Marriott with I Made Subandi
Date and Time: Saturday June 3, 9:30 PM | Sunday June 4, 2:00 PM
Duration: 70 minutes, no intermission
Location: Southside Theater
VOYAGE is a 70-minute ritual music drama utilizing video and interactive electronics, composed by Richard Marriott and Made Subandi, with
Pamela Z, Carla Fabrizio and Sarah Willner. Voyage follows the structure of a Balinese ritual called Calonarang, and is about crossing over the boundaries between nations, the crossroads between cultures, and the territory between life and death.
The text of VOYAGE is drawn from the memoirs of migrants and refugees from many eras, including our own. The vocalists, Made Subandi and
Pamela Z , virtuosos with wildly different techniques, deliver conversations and confrontations in which travelers encounter forces seeking to stop their journeys. Rachel Cooper, an Indonesianist who serves as Director of Performing Arts at New York’s Asia Society, is the dramaturg.
Artist Bios
Made Subandi is a renowned Balinese dalang, composer, and a virtuoso performer on the gender, kendang, and suling. He began his musical studies with his father, the famed drummer and gender wayang player I Made Dig. He continued his education at Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia and STSI (Music Conservatory). During his 1998-99 residency with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, he collaborated with Richard Marriott on a score for Legong: Dance of the Virgins, which has been repeatedly performed and is available on Milestone Video. Other residencies with Sekar Jaya have occurred in 2000-01 and 2012-13. He has also collaborated with Dutch trio Boi Akih, Australian composer Paul Grabowski, and American director Larry Reed. He is well known for his use of experimentation. Musicologist and composer Michael Tenzer describes Subandi as one of a few composers who "have achieved a self-conscious and fundamental break with the tabuh kreasi form of the recent past."
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She's created installations and has composed scores for dance, film, and chamber ensembles. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, Creative Capital, the Herb Alpert Award, MAP, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention, the NEA/Japan-US Fellowship, and a Djerrassi Resident Artist Program residency. www.pamelaz.com
Carla Fabrizio began her study of Indonesian music at Mills College under the direction of Lou Harrison and K.R.T. Wasitodipuro, where she had the privilege of playing cello in the world premiere performance of Mr. Harrison's Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with Javanese Gamelan. On a Fulbright scholarship, she studied Balinese rebab at Banjar Puseh Pedungan with I Madé Lemping, the leader of one of the foremost gambuh dance drama troupes in Bali. Since then, her primary musical interest has been performing and teaching Balinese music (with Gamelan Sekar Jaya since 1983, ShadowLight Productions since 1990, and Gadung Kasturi since 1997). She has acted as music coordinator in several collaborative contemporary projects, including A (Balinese) Tempest, Legong: Dance of the Virgins, and The Residents’ Wormwood.
Sarah Willner has studied and performed the music of Bali since 1988, with Gamelan Sekar Jaya in the U.S. and with many teachers in Bali, including I Wayan Loceng, I Wayan Suweca, I Made Subandi, and I Nenggah Marta, legendary specialists in gender wayang (music of shadow theater). She has performed with and managed ShadowLight Productions’ large-scale shadow theater works at the Jim Henson International Puppetry Festival at the Public Theater in NYC, the Spoleto Festival, UCLA’s Royce Theater, and many other venues in the US. Currently a member of the Lightbulb Ensemble, she has performed recently with the JACK string quartet at the Smithsonian, Disney Hall, and other venues. As a violist and violinist, she prefers to play the wild and wonderful music of local composers and friends.
Richard Marriott is the founder and artistic director of the Club Foot Orchestra, an ensemble best known for live music performance with silent films, with a repertoire of 14 scores. His other composition credits include the feature film Rising Sun, the television series The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, the Academy Award nominee Silver Into Gold, scores for choreographers Sara Shelton Mann, Della Davidson, Yin Mei, and Yoshiko Chuma, operas including Divide Light (with visual artist Lesley Dill), Passion of Leyla (with librettist Ruth Margraff), and the experimental God Machine. He was also a staff composer for Atari Games. His Metropolis Violin Concerto premiered in 2015 and he is currently composing a Ghost Ship Concerto for Cello and Orchestra for the Oakland Symphony. Voyage is his second collaboration with Made Subandi, the first being a live soundtrack for Legong: Dance of the Virgins, scored for Balinese Gamelan, String Quartet, Clarinet, and Trumpet.
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
BREATHING is a movement from Carbon Song Cycle (a inter-media chamber work by composer/performer Pamela Z and visual artist Christina McPhee). The work was originally written for voice & electronics, bassoon, viola, cello, percussion, and tape. This is a solo version performed by the composer (with just voice, processing, and tape), recorded at a 3/13/2014 duo concert with Joan La Barbara as part of the 2014 ROOM Series. Pamela Z is using a gesture controller (designed and built by Donald Swearingen). © 2013 Last Letter Music (ASCAP)