Ruang Suara

The project Ruang Suara began on the initiative and in collaboration with KfW Stiftung and Goethe-Institut Indonesien in Jakarta in October 2014 with Indonesian composers exchanging ideas with the German composers Johannes Schöllhorn and Manfred Stahne, along with members of the Ensemble Modern. Eight Indonesian composers

subsequently travelled to Frankfurt, in January 2015. Each of them developed a composition on the basis of this visit. Those eight pieces were later performed as part of concerts in Frankfurt, Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Bandung. The Ensemble Modern will once more showcase a selection of these pieces at the Holland Festival. The collaboration process was also recorded for posterity by British-Ethiopian video artist Theo Eshetu, in a film that will be shown at the beginning of the concert programme.

The project brings together two entirely different approaches to music: on the one side the Western one, in which the composer writes down as much as possible in the score, and on the other the Indonesian, in which notation mainly serves as a prompt to memory, numbers are often used in place of staves and the composition only really takes shape during the rehearsals and as a result of interaction between the musicians. The latter method actually does fit in some ways with the new Western practice of music, in which scores often give only minimal instructions and leave a great deal of freedom to the musician.

The eight composers come from different areas of Indonesia. Most of them were not educated in the Western tradition of composing. A number of them are mainly involved in electronic music and film in their home country. The concert they offer together will be filled with enthusiastic experimentation, but it is experimentation that comes from a deep-rooted awareness of the Indonesian tradition.

Every composer will give his or her own perspective on the encounter between Western and Indonesian music. Dewa Ketut Alit (Ubud) translates the harmonies and rhythms of the Balinese gamelan onto the Western range of instruments. M. Arham Aryadi and Stevie Jonathan Sutanto (both from Jakarta) combine Western and Indonesian instruments in their compositions and incorporate electronic and audiovisual elements. Joko Winarko (Surabaya) combines acted scenes with rhythms from the gamelan tradition and is fascinated with the Indonesian tradition of total art, in which theatre, dance, instrumental music and song blend into one. Ris Banbos (Jakarta) also combines the playing of Ensemble Modern with song, dance and the instrumental melodies of other participating composers. Rounding off the group are Taufik A. Adam (Jakarta), Gatot Danar Sulistiyanto (Yogyakarta) and Gema Swaratyagita (Surabaya), whose contributions explore new sounds and experiment with the body language of the performing musicians. The Ensemble Modern will also give the world premiere of a new work, together with the duo Senyawa (Yogyakarta). Senyawa is a duo made up of Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi. Senyawa combines elements from the traditional music of Java and Sulawesi with punk and metal influences, with Suryadi playing homemade instruments and Shabara using extreme singing techniques.