Waiting, Still (percussion duo, gamelan)

Originally written for piano and Balinese gamelan, Waiting : Still is now available for percussionists with this new arrangement by Dr. Omar Carmenates, Assistant Prof. of Percussion, Furman University, USA. It features Balinese gamelan with a percussion duo playing one glockenspiel, one vibraphone, one 5-octave marimba and chimes.

Dedicated to Jack Body, this work is a revisiting of an earlier work of mine, Waiting for the Aeroplane, written when I was a composition student at Victoria University in 1988. Jack was an important mentor during my student days, and two things he encouraged me to do at the time (both of which I resisted) were to join the gamelan (a great regret), and to alter the ostinato pattern in Waiting for the Aeroplane (which I don’t regret). So here, two decades later, I have finally embraced both ideas.

Here it is on Omar Carmenates’s album ‘The Gaia Theory’ - Waiting/Still (percussion and gamelan)

There is also a pared-down alternative version with no gamelan Waiting/Still no gamelan

You can listen to the original version of the piece here on the album Helix on  Waiting/Still (piano and gamelan). This performance is by Donald Nicolson (piano) and myself (gamelan).

There is also a beautiful version for piano and percussion (no gamelan) performed live by Omar Carmenates and Andra Lodge.

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