Javanese Gamelan in Dublin

Current Activities

There are currently four large gamelan ensembles rehearsing in Dublin city every week. There are also as a number of smaller ad hoc groups exploring compositions, collaborations, and gamelan gadhon.

The NCH Gamelan Orchestra
Our flagship group, and Ireland's leading performers of classical Javanese music
Rehearsals: Thursdays evenings, National Concert Hall

Gamelan Levels I & II
Beginner and intermediate classes meet each week in the NCH.
Email education@nch.ie to get involved.
Rehearsals: Tuesday evenings, National Concert Hall

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

New NCH Gamelan Album (feat. Martin Johnson and Mark Redmond)

Listen and download the album and booklet from Bandcamp

Following our collaboration with cellist Martin Johnson and uillean piper Mark Redmond, which led to a sold-our performance at the 2025 New Music Dublin Festival, the NCH Gamelan Orchestra is delighted to release our second album, titled Confluence, out now on Farpoint Recordings.

The album is accompanied by a set of music videos produced by Irish videographer Blaise Smith. The first video to be released is my own composition, Beyond Yourself, which uses muted gongs, and 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.





The album also features works by Abigail Smith, Cathy Purcell, and David Bremner. Read my interview with the RTÉ Culture website discussing the new works.

NCH Gamelan Debut CD Release with Byron Wallen

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.

Article Published to Mark the NCH Gamelan Orchestra's 10th Anniversary

This brief account of the NCH Gamelan Orchestra's first ten years was published in the bulletin of the ICTMD in 2025.

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.
[Update: Website is currently being moved over to www.oide.ie ]

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.