Browse

The book seeks to answer these questions: Why are there more than 150 gamelans (Indonesian percussion ensembles) in North America, and why are more than half of them associated with American colleges and universities? How and why did gamelan ensembles spark the ethnomusicological imagination? What impact have these ensembles had on college music programs, their local communities, and transnational Indonesian performing arts scenes? How does a lifetime of teaching foreign college students shape the lives of non-American music teachers? First providing an overview of gamelan and its incorporation in education in North America, this book uses the story of the career and community of one performer-teacher, I Made Lasmawan of Bali and Colorado, as a case study to examine the formation and sustenance academic world music ensembles. It examines the way students develop musical and cultural competence by learning gamelan in traditional ethnomusicology ensemble courses and analyzes the merits of including gamelan ensembles in studies in percussion, composition, and music education. More broadly, the book argues that beyond the classroom, the presence of these ensembles shapes transnational arts education and touristic performing arts scenes in Bali. Finally, it advocates for world music ensemble courses as a powerful means for teaching musical and cultural diversity and sparking transnational exchanges, both in and outside the classroom.

George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898), a pillar of the nineteenth-century New York musical community, was educated, lived, and worked in New York for his entire life. A skilled performer (piano, organ, violin, conducting), he was a decades-long member of the Philharmonic Societies of New York and Brooklyn, and conducted the Harmonic Society, Mendelssohn Union, numerous church choirs, and pickup choral and instrumental ensembles organized for special events. He taught music privately and in the public school system. Bristow’s professional activities were those of a highly skilled urban journeyman musician--typical of many who worked in America during the period. Bristow was a steadfast and outspoken supporter of American composers throughout his career. This started in 1854 with his participation--along with William Henry Fry and editor Richard Storrs Willis--in a months-long journalistic battle that centered on the Philharmonic Society’s lack of support for American composers, an activity that has dominated his historical reputation. But he was also a prolific composer: of five symphonies, two oratorios, an opera, many secular and sacred choral pieces, chamber music, songs, and works for piano and organ. As a quiet and self-effacing individual, Bristow was not a self-promoter. But many of his contemporaries regarded him as a skilled performer, a generous colleague, and the most important American classical composer during much of the mid-century period.