A chorus of music rehearsals and practices often fills the halls of the Olin Arts Center. On Wednesday evening, the music included the Gamelan Ensemble, led by Associate Professor of Music Gina Fatone.

Featuring an array of metallophones and drums, gamelan is a percussion-based genre from the Indonesian cultures of Java and Bali. The arrangements are intricate, often involving precise interlocking patterns between different instruments to create a larger sound.

The rhythmic stress of gamelan is distinctive, with the accents generally falling at the end of the bar, which is difficult for an ear accustomed to Western music. 鈥淏eing asked to hear it differently in a very fundamental way is challenging,鈥� said Fatone.

Kinsey Moser '18 of Burke, Va., concentrates while learning a new pattern.

Moser strikes a metallophone known as a saron.

The 乐播传媒 Gamelan Ensemble, led by Associate Professor of Music Gina Fatone, rehearses at the Olin Arts Center in February.

Maddie McLean 鈥�17 of Hood River, Ore., often seen belting out an Adele song with the Crosstones, is a newcomer to gamelan.

鈥�A cappella is such a different beast: You have someone conducting. With this, you have to really listen to each other,” says McLean, who says that listening is helping to improve her counting and rhythm.

Kinsey Moser 鈥�18 of Burke, Va., who grew up with traditional Korean music and dance, says she “wanted something completely different, and I didn鈥檛 think I could find another ensemble like this outside of college.鈥�

Lecturer in Asian Studies Keiko Konoeda, in her second year at 乐播传媒, is encouraging students in her classes to join. Konoeda finds some similarity to the gamelan in her past experiences. 鈥淪ome of the music in gamelan sounds like old traditional Japanese,鈥� she says.

From left, Kinsey Moser ’18 of Burke, Va., Lecturer in Asian Studies Keiko Konoeda, and Jade Donaldson ’18 of Wayne, N.J., practice the gamelan.

Sumarsam, a Wesleyan University professor who had his first experience with Indonesian performing arts as a boy in his East Javanese village, devotes two evenings to Indonesian shadow puppetry this week.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, Sumarsam (who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name) gives a lecture titled “Performing Hindu Stories in Indonesia: Introduction to Shadow Puppet Theater (Wayang Kulit).” At 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24, he performs a puppet play accompanied by Indonesian and American musicians, including 乐播传媒’ own gamelan ensemble. Both events take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St., and are open to the public at no cost.

As the name indicates, the essence of Indonesian shadow puppetry is the action of puppets silhouetted against a backlit cloth screen. Performance is labor-intensive for the “dhalang,” or puppet master. This person manipulates the puppets, speaks for all the characters, sings, directs the accompanying musicians and makes sound effects (usually with his feet).

Born in Dander, East Java, in 1944, Sumarsam took part in an all-night performance of Indonesia’s traditional, percussion-based gamelan music when he was 7, sitting in for a sleepy drummer. He joined that ensemble at age 8 and stayed with music, studying gamelan at a performing-arts high school and later at the college level in Indonesia.

He went to Wesleyan in the early 1970s as a visiting artist, earned his master’s degree there in 1976, and in 1992 earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell. Today he is an adjunct professor of music and director of graduate studies in Indonesian music and theater at Wesleyan.

Wayang kulit integrates the percussion-based music called “gamelan.” Performing with Sumarsam on Jan. 24 will be several highly regarded, U.S.-based musicians, including singer Jody Diamond of the American Gamelan Institute and drummer Harjito, also of Wesleyan, which has one of the premiere gamelan programs in the United States. The 乐播传媒 ensemble Gamelan Mawar Mekar will also perform.

The puppets that Sumarsam will use in the performance are part of a collection of more than 300 on permanent loan to 乐播传媒 College. David Eisler, an attorney in Dover, N.H., has loaned the collection to 乐播传媒 to honor the memory of his father, Dr. Milton Eisler. Eisler made the loan, he says, to ensure that the collection remains intact. It includes characters, animals and scenic elements.

Wayang kulit, Eisler says, is a “theater tradition as sophisticated as Shakespeare and 1,000 years old.”

Sumarsam’s performance on Jan. 24, depicting a climactic battle scene from a much longer play, is based on a Hindu story. “In Java, which is primarily Muslim, where most of the musicians are at least nominally Muslim, most of the traditional wayang is based on Hindu epic,” says Rose Pruiksma, director of the 乐播传媒 gamelan program.

“Indonesian Islam is not generally fundamentalist Islam,” she says. It assimilated beliefs and practices from Indonesian Hinduism and pantheism. “There’s actually a very rich mixture of traditions and a very high degree of religious tolerance in certain ways,” she explains.

These presentations are part of the 乐播传媒 program “Islam in the World, the World and Islam,” made possible by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation.

For more information, please call 207-786-6135.