Famous gamelan composer to play Pitt

At first glance, 35-year-old composer Ismet Ruchimat looks like a typical University of… At first glance, 35-year-old composer Ismet Ruchimat looks like a typical University of Pittsburgh grad student. With his hair pushed backward by a bandana, and wearing an ordinary shirt, a pair of jeans and set of sandals, Ruchimat could easily be mistaken for a student, or perhaps even a professor.

But Ruchimat is more than just a professor in his native West Java; he is a well-known worldwide composer and performer of the art of gamelan music.

Gamelan is a style of music that originated in Indonesia. It is most commonly comprised of sounds from bamboo xylophones, wooden and metal chimes, and gongs. If anyone has gotten a chance to experience a concert like this live, you can be sure they’d explain it as a spiritual adventure. The music sounds very much like a work song, as a group of individuals bang and clang on the gongs in a set and structured pattern, which fills the room with a wonderful sound.

Andrew Weintraub, the director of the Gamelan ensemble at the University of Pittsburgh was good enough to bring Ruchimat and his wife, dancer Ati Sumiati, for this two-day concert. Sumiati will be performing a style of dance called jaipong.

“Jaipong is a contemporary dance with traditional roots,” Ruchimat said. “At this performance at Bellefield, she will be dancing along with two students from here. All of the musicians except for me will be from Pittsburgh.”

The clothing used for the performances is called kampret. “It is a traditional costume. Even the painters, puppeteers and dancers we have that perform with us wear the style of clothing,” he said. “We modify it to reflect how it would look traditionally, and place ornaments that we design ourselves.”

Though the music often has its own rooted ideas, it allows for the performer to rework the song on their own. A song will hardly ever sound the same twice, as the myriad instruments and ideas allow the musician to explore the musical spectrum.

“I’ve been performing gamelan music for more than 20 years,” Ruchimat said. “We play a mixture of traditional and composed pieces, but we’ve started playing more of the newer arrangements than the traditional songs.”

Ruchimat has been getting a lot of good responses all over the world. In Indonesia, usually gamelan can be heard from the streets, but Ruchimat explained that playing outdoors or indoors isn’t really a factor; he just prefers to play in general. He added that playing outdoors also allows them to improvise a bit more if they have forgotten something.

“When you’re playing indoors, you have to make sure you have all of your instruments and their parts,” he said. “If you’re outside and forget a mallet, for example, sometimes we just find some bamboo and can play with that.”

Ruchimat has also been fortunate enough to make music his career. Not only did he meet his wife through playing and attending school, but he manages to stay on tour, record his music and sustain his life on it. Playing in locales that include his native Indonesia, Japan, Iceland, Malaysia, New Zealand and plenty of music festivals, Ruchimat has probably seen more of the world than most Pitt students.

“I also now have a group called Sambasunda, which plays a mixture of traditional and contemporary world music,” he said. “We’ve been around since 1993. We’ve traveled through Europe and Asia, but hopefully this June we’ll be hitting some European countries and America as well, along with China.”

“I’m the oldest one in the group. I’m 35, but the rest of the people are around 26 to 27 years old on average,” he said. “We started off as a group of maybe six or seven people, but now we have I think about 20 or so people involved.”

Sambasunda has been releasing music for several years now, but unfortunately not in the United States. “You probably have to look to online stores in other countries and get it imported here,” he said.

Ruchimat has been in Pittsburgh since March 18, training the Pitt ensemble in the styles of Javanese gamelan. The University just received the new set, called “Degung,” courtesy of Tony Lydgate, a gamelan aficionado from Hawaii. He will also be in attendance for the concert this weekend.

Thanks to a large donation by Lydgate, Ruchimat and Sumiati will have the chance to expand the minds of our school’s gamelan ensemble. And hopefully, students, adults and professors will get a true feeling of Eastern tradition at the concert this weekend.

Be sure to experience what will be an event of breathtaking beauty as well as an extremely meditative and profound journey. Don’t miss it.

University of Pittsburgh Gamelan Ensemble, featuring Ismet Ruchimat and Ati Sumiati, will be performing this Friday and Saturday in Bellefield Hall Auditorium. Doors open at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a Pitt ID, $5 for students of other schools and $10 general admission.