Crazy Ball of Yarn (2001-02) 6' for Balinese gamelan (four kantillan, four pemades, ugal pemade, two calungs, two penyacahs, two jegogans, kendang, ceng-ceng, gong, bell tree/additional gongs, kempli)

This piece was written for Gamelan Galak-tika when I was a member of the group. It was premiered in April 2002. The piece will be released on GGT's next CD.

A lot of Balinese music was written specifically to accompany dance. So when I wrote a piece for gamelan, I tried to incorporate what the idea of "dance music" means to me, as someone who has grown up at the end of the twentieth century in America. And in fact, it turned out that the Balinese musical idoms and grammar need only very minor tweaking before they begin to sound like a music with a very different heritage. The title comes from a complicated series of mishearings and misunderstandings, which turns out to be quite appropriate, as the piece itself deals with what happens during an imperfect process of translation.