Javanese Gamelan in Dublin

Current Activities

There are currently five different gamelan groups active in the city. Visit the NEWS section of this website for upcoming concert details.

The NCH Gamelan Orchestra
Our flagship group, and Ireland's leading performers of classical Javanese music ("karawitan")
Rehearsals: Monday evenings

Gamelan Jam Delapan
Literally "The 8 O'Clock Gamelan", the National Concert Hall's intermediate class. Email education@nch.ie to get involved.
Rehearsals: Tuesday evenings

Gamelan Permulaan
Literally "The Beginners' Gamelan", the National Concert Hall's beginners class. Email education@nch.ie to get involved.
Rehearsals: Tuesday evenings

The UCD Gamelan Orchestra
An orchestra of music students from University College Dublin
Rehearsals: Wednesday evenings

Gamelan Nua
An ensemble of composers creating and performing their own music
Rehearsals: Thursday evenings

Gamelan on the National Music Curriculum

In 2022 I was honoured to be approached by the Music Curriculum Team for the National Junior Cycle in Ireland, who invited me to make a video resource introducing school children all over the country to the gamelan orchestra. You can see the whole video here on the National Junior Cycle website.

The Story of Dublin's Gamelan

The story of how Dublin received a full bronze gamelan as a gift from the Sultan of Yogyakarta in Java is recounted in this article I wrote for the International Council for Traditional Music. The article also looks at the many opportunities gamelan music offers for performance, composition, academic research, teaching and health care.

NCH Gamelan Performs in Indonesia

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.

New Release: Bonang Quartet No.1

Bonang Quartet No.1 has been released as a digital single and is now available for download from Amazon and CD Baby, and iTunes, or to stream on Spotify.

Bonang Quartet No.1 was one of my first gamelan compositions and has perhaps become my most popular. Written in 2008, it was quickly performed across the UK, at the York Late Music Festival, the Buxton Music Festival, at Manchester's Royal Northern College of Music, and for the Royal Musicological Association. The following year, it was performed in Ireland's National Concert Hall as part of the Ergodos Music Festival, alongside the premiere of my Bonang Quartet No.2. This occasion was also marked by the first of several national broadcasts for the piece.