Ladrang Kampung for flute, Javanese drums, Javanese gamelan, live audio and video - Steve Everett
Performers:
Soloists: Jessica Sherwood, flute and Tom Sherwood, gender and kendhang (drums)
Gamelan ensemble on video, Sonic Generator (Atlanta, Georgia USA)
Jessica Sherwood, peking
Ted Gurch, slenthem
Brad Ritchie, demung
Tom Sherwood, kempul, kenong, kempyang, kethuk, gong ageng
Yayoi Everett, bonang panerus
Steve Everett, bonang barung

This work, written in August 2000, is a traditional setting of a Javanese gamelan cyclical form, ladrang and uses a five-note Javanese scale, slendro. Flute, drums, and gamelan instruments are processed with the Kyma composition environment. Interactive processing of the instruments is drawn from a spectral analysis of the sekaten gamelan instruments at STSI Conservatory of Music in Surakarta, Java (recorded 1999). Real-time analysis-resynthesis of the instruments is performed using Kyma utilizing spectral parameters from the sekaten gamelan.

This work is part of a two-hour shadow play, KAM, for Javanese puppeteer, gamelan and western musicians, and interactive sound and video, based on the play Ki Ageng Mangir by Indonesian author and political dissident, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The composer met with Toer in Jakarta on two occasions in developing the work. Shadow puppets and music interact with the use of Kyma, Eyecon infrared motion capture system, and Isadora video processing program. KAM was most recently featured as concluding performance at the Society of Ethnomusicology 50th International Conference in Atlanta in 2005.

Ladrang Kampung was performed at ICMC2003 in Singapore and has been recorded by Gamelan Asmårådånå of Singapore on their CD Fusion Gamelan, with dizi (Chinese flute) solo.

This video was taken of a performance at Georgia Institute of Technology on November 12, 2007.

Steve Everett is professor of music at Emory University in Atlanta (steveeverett.org/)