Lion’s Eye / Lion’s Tale

Pauline Oliveros- composer

Berkeley Gamelan Ensemble- all instruments

A 9-piece gamelan ensemble with “expanded range” describes the BGE, or at least the BGE as you hear it here. BGE member Carter Scholz also plays a computer sampler (not part of the trad BGE lineup) which allows notes to be sustained for long periods of time or at a phenomenally fast rate (up to 1600 beats per minute). Despite all this prefacing, this is not as radical-sounding as you might expect It sounds clearly different from traditional Indonesian gamelan music, but not jarringly so. The parts that aren’t field recording material, which is to say all of it, grow organically out of the Javanese gamelan tradition. I’m very familiar with Oliveros’ history, but if I’d heard this in a blindfold contest I’d have never guessed it was her. I say this as a compliment. She continues to surprise me in the best ways. This is a marvelously odd and entrancing work.

Deep Listening

DL  28-2006

Richard Grooms