Gamelan concert highlights Thai royal anthem

The April 26 concert by the Cornell Gamelan Ensemble will feature a piece inspired by Thailand's royal anthem to celebrate and welcome Parkorn Wangpaiboonkit, who joined the music department as an assistant professor last fall. The concert will also include other gamelan pieces with a variety of styles and melodies.

The 7:30 p.m. concert will take place in the Groos Family Atrium of Klarman Hall and is free and open to the public. The ensemble, which was created at Cornell in 1972, consists of large mostly bronze percussion instruments and performs the most prominent form of traditional music in Indonesia.

The featured piece, "ladrang Siyem," is a Javanese gamelan adaptation of the traditional anthem and was composed in homage to King Prajadhipok (Rama VII) of Thailand (then called Siam), who visited the Surakarta Palace in Java, Indonesia in 1929.

During the concert, Christopher J. Miller, senior lecturer in music and director of the ensemble, will join with Wangpaiboonkit to talk about the historical and musical idiosyncrasies of the original Siamese melody and its Javanese adaptation.

Read the full story on The College of Arts & Sciences website.