Founded and directed by Evan Ziporyn, composer and Associate Professor of Music at MIT, Gamelan Galak Tika is approximately 30 members strong, drawing its membership from MIT students, staff, and the community at large. We rehearse for roughly five hours a week, and we perform as often as we can, learning all our music aurally, without the aid of notation. Modeled on the Balinese village sekeha, with decisions made communally and responsibilities shared among the members of the ensemble, we simply seek to share our passion for incredible sounds of the tradition as well for experimentation.
Since its inception, the group has devoted itself both to studying traditional Balinese music and dance and to developing new works by Balinese and American composers. It has given dozens of performances around the East Coast and New England, at venues ranging from the Bang on a Can Marathon at Lincoln Center and Brooklyn Academy of Music to Bostons First Night to an appearance at the Kripalu Yoga Institute. Its programs have included presentations of traditional Balinese repertoire, new works by twentieth-century Balinese composers, collaborations with the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble and tai chi master Bow Sim Mark, andwith famed computer music duo Basso Bongo on Ziporyn's Amok!. Gamelan Galak Tika has given school workshops, offered dance classes, and also devised the first-ever kecak-along, a participatory performance in which 1,000 people were taught to shout the interlocking rhythms of the famous Balinese monkey chant. Galak Tika has premiered music and dance works by Nyoman Catra, Desak Made Suarti Laksmi, Dewa Ketut Alit, Wayan Lotring, Gde Manik, I Mario, Joshua Penman, Dan Schmidt, Danielle Smith, Christine Southworth, Nyoman Windha, Evan Ziporyn, and Rebecca Zook.
