Kyai Jati Rosa - the Nch Gamelan Orchestra at Bray Jazz Festival at Bray Town Hall

Indonesian gamelan music is both haunting and exotic.

'Kyai Jati Roso', the National Concert Hall Gamelan Orchestra,
have been presenting this mesmerising traditional music from the East Indies in Ireland for the past number of years.

With support from the UCD School of Music, Kyai Jati Roso, under the direction of composer and arranger Dr. Peter Moran will bring their unique and compelling music to Bray Jazz Festival this year.

Although a part of the rich culture of Java and Bali for over a thousand years, gamelan has held a unique fascination in the West since it famously inspired such early twentieth-century composers such as Debussy and Satie....

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Indonesian gamelan music is both haunting and exotic.

'Kyai Jati Roso', the National Concert Hall Gamelan Orchestra,
have been presenting this mesmerising traditional music from the East Indies in Ireland for the past number of years.

With support from the UCD School of Music, Kyai Jati Roso, under the direction of composer and arranger Dr. Peter Moran will bring their unique and compelling music to Bray Jazz Festival this year.

Although a part of the rich culture of Java and Bali for over a thousand years, gamelan has held a unique fascination in the West since it famously inspired such early twentieth-century composers such as Debussy and Satie.

The music is played by beating mallets on metallophones, kendhang drums, and xylophones, together with bamboo flutes and a bowed instrument called a rebab.

Dr. Peter Moran is an award-winning Irish composer who has been teaching Javanese gamelan for nearly 10 years. His PhD research included seven new compositions for gamelan and a minor thesis on the subject of notating contemporary music for gamelan.

His gamelan compositions have been performed in England, Ireland and Indonesia. While living in York for seven years, he performed with Gamelan Sekar Petak under the direction of Dr. Neil Sorrell, one of the world's leading experts on Javanese gamelan.

What is a Gamelan?
Gamelan is the ancient classical music of Indonesia, with a history stretching back almost a thousand years. It is an orchestra made up of tuned gongs and other bronze percussion instruments, with a handful of softer instruments such as the bamboo flute (suling), the two-stringed fiddle (rebab), the gendèr (a soft-keyed metallophone), the siter (plucked zither) and the hand drums (kendhang), which direct the ensemble.

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