Dewa Alit on TBA podcast

Dewa is now on Lisbon's city theater Teatro Bairro Alto's podcast program "Dito e Feito."

in this program you will hear a collection of Dewa Alit's compositions throughout his career selected by Dewa Alit himself under the theme of "memory."

program note by Dewa Alit

CHALLENGING THE MEMORY

"My musical background is Balinese traditional music called gamelan and most of my compositions are written for gamelan.

Gamelan is traditionally played by memory, meaning the musicians don’t use notations not only in the performance but throughout the learning process of the music.

My gamelan ensemble, Gamelan Salukat, is no exception. The musicians learn and play my music by memory. But because my music is different from what they are used to, such as unusual interlocking patterns, layers of different rhythm and codes, the musicians’ normal method to memorize the music is constantly challenged.

In this collection of my works, you will hear the results of my musicians memory skills that have overcome this challenge.

I also included my works that are written for non-gamelan musicians such as western chamber ensembles. These pieces are played normally with written scores. Here I don’t challenge their ability to memorize but I am still challenging their memories of music as a whole by presenting something new to them as a contemporary music composer."

Dito e Feito #53

Dewa Alit

CHALLENGING THE MEMORY

https://teatrodobairroalto.pt/en/event/challeging-the-memory