Composer, Performer, Musical Director National Concert Hall Gamelan and UCD Gamelan Orchestra
Listen and download the album and booklet from Bandcamp
Since 2022, it has been my great honour to work with legendary Irish traditional musicians Dónal Lunny and Paddy Glackin in my role as director of UCD's Traditional Music Practices group.
In April 2025, we released our debut album showcasing the achievements of the ensemble in their first three years. The album features original student compositions alongside new arrangements of traditional Irish tunes, a dance tune from Macedonia, and Paddy Glackin's slip jig The Half Century.
The title track, Seven Springs, is a brand new composition written especially for this ensemble by Dónal Lunny himself.
Following the album launch, we were invited to appear on RTÉ Radio's flagship traditional Irish music show, Céilí House, where we performed live in studio.
Listen back to the full show here.
After the NCH Gamelan Orchestra released their debut album featuring Byron Wallen (see below), this milestone has gained further recognition both nationally and internationally.
The remarkable CD launch event, in which Byron Wallen was joined on stage by His Excellency the Indonesian Ambassador, was reported on Indonesia's national TVOne News.
Closer to home, I gave an academic conference paper on the history and tuning of the NCH Gamelan at the 20th Anniversary Conference of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance in Ireland, and I spoke to Totally Dublin magazine about the album launch.
His Royal Highness the Sultan of Yogyakarta also helped us to mark our anniverary by sending the director of his Royal Palace Gamelan Musicians, Pak Sumanto, to retune the entire gamelan to a new tuning system, more closely matching that of some of the older palace gamelans.
All of this activity follows my own appearance on L.A.'s KPFK Radio last July (see more on that below).
And all of this excitement was immediately followed by the NCH Gamelan Orchestra's performance with cellist Martin Johnson and piper Mark Redmond at the New Music Dublin Festival in April, for which I was interviewed by the RTÉ Culture website (more on that project below).
To round off a busy year, we held a massive gathering of gamelan players from all across Ireland for an all-day traditional gamelan music session (known as a klenèngan, or an uyon-uyon which took place in UCD at the end of April.
The NCH Gamelan Orchestra will be performing at this year's New Music Dublin Festival with the principal cellist of Ireland's National Symphony Orchestra, Martin Johnson.
My new work, entitled Beyond Yourself, explores the new tuning system of the NCH gamelan instruments after the director of the Yogyakarta Royal Palace Gamelan Musicians, Pak Sumanto, retuned the gamelan in October 2024. The composition uses the soft metal gendèr instruments, combining the slendro and pelog tuning of the gamelan, while the solo cello part unfolds an ornate melody inspired by South Indian classical music.
Johnson will also give the world premieres of new works written especially for the occasion by composers David Bremner and Cathy Purcell (pictured). The gamelan orchestra will also be joined for this concert by the renowned Irish uillean piper Mark Redmond. And the full programme will be performed again, alongside a set of traditional Indonesian works, at our end-of year concert in the NCH in June.
Read my interview with the RTÉ Culture website discussing the new works.
PRESS RELEASE
June 2024
The NCH Gamelan Orchestra is proud to release their debut album featuring the renowned jazz trumpeter Byron Wallen.
This release celebrates the 10th Anniversary since the Sultan of Yogyakarta presented this unique collection of Indonesian gamelan instruments as a gift to the Irish people in 2014.
The music on this album represents a variety of the traditional gamelan styles and techniques unique to the region of Yogyakarta, including a number of musical features taught to the NCH ensemble specifically by visiting artists from Java, including the sultan's personal Royal Palace Musicians.
The record also includes a special field recording of a gamelan gong being built in Java in 2013, recorded by ensemble director Dr. Peter Moran.
Byron Wallen features on an original composition by Peter Moran entitled "Embat", which was inspired by the sounds of the gamelan being built. Originally written for the ensemble's inaugural concert during the sultan's 2014 visit, it is rearranged here for Byron Wallen especially for this release.
The album download includes a pdf of a 44-page commemorative booklet detailing the remarkable story of these instruments. The booklet gives an account of how the instruments were built, and the sultan's royal visit to Dublin; it tells the stories of the orchestra's concerts in Ireland and in Java, and the Indonesian reaction to those concerts, with photos documenting the whole journey.
A limited-edition 10th-Anniversary Commemorative CD is also available from Bandcamp in a beautiful sliding matchbox-style presentation box containing a full-colour print of the booklet.
In July 2024 in LA I stopped by the KPFK radio studio where I was interviewed by the Grammy-award winning guitarist John Schneider. Our conversation ranged across my recent work, from our NCH Gamelan album release with Byron Wallen to my most recent choral compositions.
In Spring 2024 I appeared on the Creative Futures Academy's Makers and Creators Podcast to talk about teaching songwriting, my most memorable performances, and my own creative journey.
I was delighted to be participating in two fantastic initiatives organised by Ireland's Contemporary Music Centre.
The Choral Sketches project was an exclusive opportunity for three selected composers to develop their choral writing skills by working with Paul Hillier and Chamber Choir Ireland. For my participation, I composed a new work called Mantra, which came out of my own meditation practise, and which received a beautiful performnce by CCI at the New Music Dublin Festival in April.
I discussed the work and its performance on the CMC's podcast, Amplify, which you can listen to here (from 6'30-12'00").
Another CMC initiative, the CMC Colleagues Programme is a new collaboration initiative in which 40 Irish composers have been teamed up with 40 performers to create new music. I will be writing two new works for this project. The first is for voice and tape, for the fabulous soprano Elizabeth Hilliard, setting poems written by the American painter Ron Switzer. The second is for viola and tape, for the amazing violist and director of Musici Ireland, Beth McNinch, using samples of string harmonics which Beth will record especially for the work.
Two of my compositions for guitar and electronics are featured on the new CD/DVD release Knowing/Unknowing from Ben Dwyer on Farpoint Recordings.
Anois 's Aris (2009), which was originally written, in collaboration with Judith Ring, for the delicate medieval psaltery, has been tranformed in Ben's hands into a dramatic performance piece.
My more recent work Enharmonic Harmonics (2016), written especially for Ben, is an exploration of the "enharmonic genus", the remarkable microtonal tuning system of ancient Greece.
In August 2018, the NCH Gamelan represented Ireland at the International Gamelan Festival in Indonesia. The week-long festival took place in venues all across the city of Surakarta in Central Java. We put together a specially-prepared programme for the festival to showcase the different gamelan styles and techniques we have developed in the five years since we began playing together. The programme included a selection of popular Javanese folk songs and original compositions, including my own work Embat, alongside several core works from the classical Javanese repertoire.
We performed before a huge audience in the festival's outdoor arena, and the whole performance was extremely well received. The event was covered by national media, including BBC Indonesia. Indonesia's national weekly magazine, Tempo, described how the group "truly captured the audience's attention", while one festival organiser cited this ensemble as a great example of how the foreign gamelan orchestras at the festival were able to "mesmerise" audiences with their "competent and holistic understanding of gamelan". But the greatest appreciation was reserved for our rendition of the popular Javanese song Prau Layar, which closed the set with the festival audience enthusiastically cheering and singing
At the festival's closing ceremony I was delighted to be presented with the surprise gift of a specially-designed lamp bearing the image of Javanese deity Wuku Sungsang, who is symbolically associated with the date of my birth.
Event: ICTMD Conference
Paper: “Tradisi Baru”: The NCH Gamelan Orchestra's First Ten Years
Venue: Dublin City University
Event: New Music Dublin Festival
Composition: Beyond Yourself for cello and gamelan (World Premiere with Martin Johnson)
Performers: NCH Gamelan Orchestra
Venue: National Concert Hall, Dublin
Event: UCD Trad Ensemble CD Launch
Performers: Paddy Glackin, UCD Trad Ensemble
Venue: The Sugar Club, Dublin
Event: UCD Composition Ensemble Concert
Venue: National Concert Hall, Dublin
Event: All-Ireland Gamelan Gathering
Performers: Cork, West Cork, Limerick, Belfast, NCH and UCD Gamelan Orchestras
Venue: University College Dublin
Event: NCH Gamelan Orchestra Concert
Composition: Beyond Yourself for cello and gamelan (with Martin Johnson)
Performers: NCH Gamelan Orchestra
Venue: National Concert Hall, Dublin
Event: NCH Gamelan Beginner Classes Concert
Venue: National Concert Hall, Dublin
