This year we are excited to welcome four international guest artists:

I Putu Arya Deva Suryanegara (Arya) is a composer and musician from Kerobokan, Bali, Indonesia. His recent work integrates computer music systems and experimental approaches within frameworks rooted in Balinese gamelan traditions. This direction is shaped by his deep expertise in various gamelan styles and his interests in digital music and music programming. His artistic practice positions him within a new generation of composers working across both gamelan and digital technologies. He is currently interested in developing musical interfaces for performance and interactive composition across acoustic and digital settings.
Arya earned his Bachelor of Arts from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Denpasar in 2018 and his Master of Music from the Université de Montréal in 2024. He is a lecturer at the Université de Montréal, founder of Gamelan Naradha Gita (Nagi), and co-artistic director of Gamelan Giri Kedaton in Montreal.

Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti (Sraya) is a composer and musician from Celuk, Sukawati, Bali, Indonesia. Her artistic practice engages with experimental, theatrical, and site-responsive approaches informed by Balinese gamelan traditions, with a growing interest in solo performance within contemporary gamelan contexts. This work reflects an approach that expands traditional frameworks through performative and spatial exploration. Her works have been presented internationally, including a commission by Third Coast Percussion (USA), and at festivals and institutions across Asia and North America. She has also served as Guest Music Director at Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Guest Music Teacher at the University of California, Berkeley (2022–2024).
Sraya earned her Bachelor of Arts from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Denpasar in 2018 and her Master’s degree from ISI Surakarta in 2022. She is the artistic director of Sanggar S’mara Murti in Bali and currently teaches Balinese music and dance with Gamelan Giri Kedaton at Université de Montréal.

Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti is a multicultural dancer, musician, actor, and singer. Ayu grew up both in the Bay Area and in Bali, and is now based in Los Angeles. Ayu has trained with world-renowned composers and choreographers (including her parents!) and teaches young local dancers and musicians at Çudamani, in Pengosekan, Bali. With Çudamani, she has toured internationally, teaching and performing in Japan, Greece, and the United States, and runs their Summer Institute with her parents. Ayu is also part of Bumi Bajra, a Balinese theater and performing arts company.
Graduating from UCLA with a degree in World Arts and Cultures and minors in Ethnomusicology and Entrepreneurship, Ayu studied a variety of different art forms, including Thai music, hip hop, and West African dance. Opportunities such as the UCLA Prison Education Program and WACsmash have furthered Ayu’s experiences in arts activism and performance production.
Recently, Ayu became a Fulbright Grantee, studying with elderly master artists in Bali in collaboration with Balinese artists and professors. Last year, Ayu produced the first Los Angeles Gamelan Festival at the Consulate of Indonesia, alongside the team at Unity Studios LA. Currently, Ayu is a featured voice in the PS5 video game, Kena: Scars of Kosmora. This year, she launches LARAS, her Arts Company. Through the arts, Ayu hopes to continue studying different art forms and giving back to communities both in the US and in Indonesia.

Shoko Yamamuro

A leading Balinese dancer praised by The Boston Globe for her remarkable agility, Shoko Yamamuro regularly performs with California-based Gamelan Sekar Jaya and joins our ensemble to perform Oleg Tamulilingan. Before moving to the Bay Area, she was dance director for Gamelan Dharma Swara and has taught courses and workshops at Columbia, Wesleyan, Bard College, Colgate University, Bates College and MIT.

---Our Director---

I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka (Ryan) is originally from Tabanan, and grew up near Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. Since he was young, he studied Balinese gamelan music, culminating in a B.A. (2019) and M.A. (2022) from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Denpasar. He is a member of Cudamani, a well-known performing arts group based in Pengosekan, Ubud. As a Balinese musician, teacher, and composer, he has taught and composed actively all over the island and toured abroad several times. Some composition highlights are “Legong Swatika” for Cudamani's 2021 US East Coast Tour and “Anglelana Lamuk” for the Bali Arts Festival in 2022. After moving to Vancouver for UBC's Andrew Fellowship artist residency, he has composed for Gamelan Gita Asmara, Gamelan Bike Bike, as well as a saxophone quartet piece for the Orpheus Quartet and several pieces for chamber ensembles. Ryan is currently completing his DMA in Music Composition at the UBC School of Music, focusing on applying Balinese compositional techniques to Western instruments and incorporating Western instruments into gamelan ensembles.

---Our Founder---

Michael Tenzer is a Professor of Ethnomusicology at the UBC School of Music. Before moving to Vancouver he co-founded the thriving California Bay Area group Gamelan Sekar Jaya. In 1996, he moved to Vancouver and founded Gamelan Gita Asmara. In the 1980s-2000s, he composed several works for Balinese Gamelan that incorporated the rhythmic language of Karnatak (South Indian) music. Michael's award-winning writings on Balinese gamelan music are widely recognised as highly significant scholarly works.

GGA's members this year are:

Jack Adams, Bruce Baghemil, Wendy Chen, Dave Dagta, Leonard Gao, Meris Goodman, Jaanam Jaswani, Nirmal Kaur, Colin MacDonald, Oscar Murakami-Smith, Risa Murakami-Smith, Sylvain Paradis, I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka, Paul Patko, Eshantha Peiris, Shruti Ramani, Bero Saker, John Marvin Scott, Michael Tenzer, Luke Vincent. 

For making our 2026 concert season possible, we are thankful for a generous donation from the Vancouver Foundation.

Garum (2025) 8'

by I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka (1997–)

The title means "nutmeg," which comes from the seeds of a tree native to Maluku, Eastern Indonesia. The fragrant flavours of these seeds were what first brought the Portuguese and Dutch to colonise Indonesia beginning in the 1500s. Garum is in the courtly semar pegulingan style, a genre whose original context is playing sweet melodies for royalty while they made sweet love. Our director, Ryan, weaves in multiple modes, taking full advantage of the melodic colours of our semaradana instruments. It also features solo trompong (gong-row) playing, which ornaments the main melody. Ryan dedicated this composition to his late Aunt, who died very young.

Gambangan (a.k.a. Gambang Kuta) (c.1920s) 4'

by I Wayan Lotring (1887–1983)

The gambang is an ancient bamboo xylophone (pictured above) instrument formerly found across Bali but now relatively rare. Using forked mallets, the gambang ornaments very old Hindu melodies played in a syncopated 5+3 rhythm. Created in the 1920s by the oldest known Balinese composer, Lotring, Gambangan pays homage to this ancient style by transferring patterns from the gambang instrument into the more recent style known as pelegongan. This is a prime example of a broader compositional practice where older styles are reworked into newer pieces, a kind of "musical recycling" that has invigorated musical practices for centuries. In Balinese Hinduism, this practice is not seen as a taint on the composer's originality; rather it is an act of good karma and respect to use music of the past again. This concept musically parallels the cycles of rebirth called samsara.

Gambangan 2.0 (2026) 5'

by I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka (1997–)

Inspired by Gambangan, our director wondered what music Lotring might have created had he lived a century later. Though this piece has the same underlying melodic pattern (5+3) as the source music (Gambang) instead of a quadruple beat division as in most traditional gamelan music, Swaryandana divides the beat into five to make a quintuple division of the beat. Additionally, the piece's melody is allowed to freely traverse the seven notes of our gamelan semaradana, rather than being restricted to five. These two features reflect recent Balinese compositional styles, and thus brings Gambangan (itself a reworking of an even older style) into the 21st century.

Longitude II (for reong Semaradana and two saxophones) (2026) 8'

by I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka (1997–)
Colin MacDonald and Luke Vincent, saxophones

This composition is the second in an ongoing project called Longitude. In these compositions I seek to blur the imagined boundaries of “east” and “west” by blending compositional ideas from Balinese and Western music. In Longitude II, the interlocking polyphonic patterns on the reyong (Balinese gong row) interact and dialog with flowing saxophone lines, grooving together in an 11-beat framework. The reyong patterns maintain the social cooperation of traditional playing technique, but explore the melodic domain more freely without being constrained by Balinese five-tone modes. The saxophone melodies respond to the reyong parts while adding chromatic inflections. The ensemble roles fluctuate throughout the composition, sharing textural prominence between the instruments. As a whole, these techniques reflect the goal of creating a give-and-take of musical ideas.

[program note by Putu Swaryandana]

Two Geguntangan Songs (trad.)

sung by Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti, drumming by Sraya and Arya, suling flute by Ryan

These songs are part of the genre known as geguntangan, a small ensemble of drums, percussion, flute and singers. The drums provide interludes with rapid, improvised interlocking parts between verses of folk songs.
The first song presented is Sekar Sandat, which teaches a moral through the depiction of a sandat flower. These plants still give off a pleasant fragrance even once they are decaying, which is a metaphor for the idea that the older one is, the wiser they should become.
The second folk song, Pantun Jelih, expresses gratitude to Dewi Sri, the Javano-Balinese goddess of rice and fertility. A revered mother figure, she is believed to control the success of agriculture. This song describes how the rice paddies (pantun) turn yellow when the rice grains are ripe (jelih) with nutrients and ready to be harvested, a blessing given by Dewi Sri.

Sate Lilit (2024, rev. 2025) 8'

by I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka (1997–)

Named for a tasty skewer of minced meat distinctive to Balinese cuisine, this piece has a playful energy. Sate Lilit shares some features with the rhythmic complexity of Gambangan 2.0, but builds them out over multiple sections. In the first section, the melodic cycle is ambiguous about its allegiance to duple or triple time. In the slower second section, the reong and gangsa instruments flit between these two divisions, even playing them simultaneously. Finally, an 11-beat pattern of 3+3+3+2 is repeated by all.

Oleg Tamulilingan (1951) 15'

music by Pan Sukra, choreography by I Ketut Maria (1898–1968)
Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti and Shoko Yamamuro, dancers

This dance piece tells an abstract story of two bees in courtship. You will see our two dancers, Shoko Yamamuro and Dewa Ayu Larassanti, with wing-like attachments to their costumes, frolicking in a garden. The two bees dance around flirtatiously before a light embrace right at the end. Created for the 1952 Europe/US tour of the famous Peliatan gamelan group, it has the rambunctious rhythms and sudden mood shifts iconic of the 20th century kebyar oeuvre alongside classical legong dance elements.

Program notes by Oscar Smith, March 2026

Photo credit: via https://edwardherbst.net/