Tibetan Musician, Balinese Performers Featured at UK World Music and Dance Concert
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 3, 2019) — Join the University of Kentucky School of Music for its annual UK World Music and Dance Concert featuring Tibetan musician Karjam Saeji and special guests Pak Made Lasmawan and Ni Ketut Marni 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5, in the Singletary Center for the Arts Recital Hall. The concert is free and open to the public.
Karsangjamtso (Karjam for short) Saeji was born in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. After performing widely in Tibet and China for over 15 years, singer, songwriter, musician and dancer Saeji began an exciting international solo career. His first solo CD, "Pilgrimage," brought together a selection of Tibetan traditional songs and his first original compositions with a slightly new-age feel.
Guest artists Pak Made Lasmawan and his wife Ni Ketut Marni return to the Bluegrass again this year for a multi-day residency. The pair are teachers of Balinese music and dance at Colorado College.
The concert will also showcase UK’s own Bluegrass Ensemble, graduate student Hada Jang singing and playing the gayagum zither (called gayagum byeongchang), and the Balinese Gamelan Angklung Langen Kerti Ensemble, directed by Donna Kwon.
The program’s gamelan angklung set is based on a scale of four pitches and is used commonly in ritual ceremonies in Bali. The ensemble features various large and medium bronze gongs, keyed xylophones of various sizes, drums, suling flutes and other percussion instruments like the distinctive turtle-shaped ceng ceng. Balinese gamelan is known for its shimmering, metallic sound and fast interlocking patterns called kotekan. This gamelan was bestowed the name “Langen Kerti,” which means “follow your bliss.”
The UK World Music and Dance Concert is sponsored by UK’s World Music program, the School of Music’s Studio and Program Guest Support grant, the Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, the College of Fine Arts and Green Room Exchange.
For more information about the World Music and Dance Concert, contact Donna Kwon, associate professor of ethnomusicology, by email at donna.kwon@uky.edu or by phone at 859-257-4912.
The School of Music in the UK College of Fine Arts has garnered national recognition for high-caliber education in opera, choral and instrumental music performance, as well as music education, music therapy, composition, theory and music history.
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