The word Salukat is Dewa Alit's original combination of two words; "salu" and "kat". "Salu" means house, "kat" signifies regeneration and the cycles of rebirth, and together it makes a place for new creativities based on the tradition.

The members of Gamelan Salukat consists of some 25 young musicians from Ubud area, 15 of whom join Alit for this concert in Stockholm. They are not only musicians with high skill and knowledge in traditional gamelan, but also are enthusiastic about being on the very front line in the Balinese gamelan music scene by playing Dewa Alit's most new and challenging music.  

DEWA ALIT

Born to a family of artists in Pengosekan village in Bali, Dewa Alit grew up surrounded by Balinese gamelan music from early childhood. His father Dewa Nyoman Sura and his oldest brother Dewa Putu Berata were the most influential teachers for gamelan in his life. He began performing at age 11, and by age 13 was playing in his village’s adult group, Tunas Mekar Pengosekan. 1988-1995 he played in the internationally acclaimed Gamelan Semara Ratih of Ubud village, touring internationally.

In 1997, a year before graduating from Academy of Indonesian Performing Arts in Denpasar (STSI Denpasar), Dewa Alit and his brothers founded a gamelan group Çudamani which immediately acknowledged as one of the best gamelan groups and went on their own international tours.  Dewa Alit founded his own gamelan group in 2007, Gamelan Salukat, seeking a wider path for expressing his approach to new music in gamelan and performing on a new set of instruments of Alit’s own tuning and design. 

As a composer, Dewa Alit is generally acknowledged as the leading figure of his generation in Bali and beyond. One of his early works “Geregel” (2000) was subject of a music analysis by Wayne Vitalle in the Perspectives on New Music.  His “Semara Wisaya” for the Boston-base gamelan group Galak Tika was performed at New York Carnegie in 2004 and another composition “Pelog Slendro” at Bang on a Can Marathon in June 2006.

Dewa's album released In 2022, "Chasing the Phantom" from the label Black Truffle was included in the lists for The Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp: July 2022, the Wire magazine’s Best Releases of 2022 list, The Best Contemporary Classical of 2022, and the New York Times' Best Classical Music Tracks of 2022

Pipe organ performance featuring Kali Malone’s compositions from her critically acclaimed album The Sacrificial Code. This performance includes additional accompaniment by Stephen O'Malley on several 4-handed organ pieces.

Festival pass includes entry to the concert on 17 March only!

Headquartered in Stockholm, Kali Malone is an American composer and musician who creates sonic monoliths that tug at the very material of listening. Her compositions implement specific tuning systems in minimalist structure for pipe organ, choir, chamber music ensembles, and electroacoustic formats.

    Malone’s music is rich with harmonic texture through synthetic and acoustic instrumentation in repetitive motions and extended durations. The music emits distinct emotive, dynamic, and affective hues which bring forth a stunning depth of focus.  

    With its slow, purified, and seemingly austere qualities, The Sacrificial Code guides us through an almost trance-inducing process where we become vulnerable receptors for every slight movement, where every miniature shift in sound becomes magnified through stillness. As such, it’s a uniquely satisfying exercise in transcendence through self-restraint, a striking realization of ideas borne out of academic and conceptual rigor which gradually reveals profound personal dimensions. It has a perception-altering quality that encourages self-exploration free of signposts and without a preordained endpoint.

Closing concert for the festival in the gorgeous, surreal setting of Confidencen — an 18th century rococo theatre. Two premieres: Kristofer Svensson’s Som regn for harpsichord performed by Daniel Walden and a new piece by Ellen Arkbro commissioned by the festival for a 11 piece ensemble including musicians from Berlin’s Harmonic Space Orchestra.

nb: venue will be heated prior to, but not during the performance. we recommend that you dress warm. no intermission. programme duration: ~80 minutes

ELLEN ARKBRO

Ellen Arkbro is a Swedish composer and sound-artist primarily working with intervallic harmony in just intonation. This newly commissioned work is part of a glorious expansion of the palette she first set with For Organ & Brass opening up her primary material of in-tune chords to include improvisation and other compositional strategies.

NB: passholders gain access to Thursday 16 march concert only. New concert on 15.3 requires a separate ticket.

Swedish artist, composer, poet, and mathematician Catherine Christer Hennix (b. 1948) and her just intonation Kamigaku Ensemble perform a new work in which precision-tuned and continuously sustained tones on trumpet and shō—a Japanese free-reed mouth organ—harmonically coalesce in a framework of intervallic modalities constituted in part by electronically enhanced combination tones. This arrangement of the ensemble will feature Marcus Pal on electronics; Ellen Arkbro, Susana Santos Silva, and Hilary Jeffery on trumpet; and Hennix and Mattias Hållsten on shō.

Uday Bhawalkar is among the foremost Dhrupad vocalists and has been a strong force in its growing recognition, popularity and resurgence, worldwide. Uday believes that when immersed in the note and raga, the self disappears and music takes on its own existence; the principle of ‘darshan’ in Indian philosophy.

Dhrupad is one of the oldest forms of North Indian classical music and Uday maintains its majesty and subtle nuance. Dhrupad is a living and evolving classical music tradition in which Uday has developed a unique style deeply embedded in raga, ras and bhaav.

Uday spent over 12 years studying and living in the traditional guru-shishya parampara with Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar (Vocal) and Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar (Rudra-Veena), the towering pillars of the Dhrupad tradition. During this period there was a simple and complete concentration on the music itself. This intimate relationship, in which the Ustads willingly gave their inner secrets along with Uday’s devotion, brought him to a deep sense of completeness and wholeness.

An inspiring, significant moment in this period was when Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Dagar, the eldest of the Dagar family, upon first hearing Uday’s performance in 1987, blessed him with a gold medal.

Uday has an engaging style and is able to reach out and communicate with audiences of all backgrounds. Since his first performance at Bhopal in 1985, Uday has performed in a number of prestigious festivals and events in India and abroad.