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span class="inline inline-center">Handsome: Dressed in Balinese traditional costume, members of the JACK Quartet play magnifi cent musicA somber atmosphere descended upon the vast Ardha Chandra amphitheater as the musicians from the Makaradhwaja Ensemble and the JACK Quartet stepped on stage, with heavy expectation and anxiety filling the night air.

On the Balinese side was the Makaradhwaja Ensemble, a performing art troupe based in Singapadu, Gianyar. It was founded by Made Bandem and his wife Suasthi Bandem, both imposing figures in Bali’s cultural landscape. Made Bandem, who currently teaches at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, is an accomplished dancer and renowned ethnomusicologist who has authored several biblical books on Balinese performing arts. His wife is a respected choreographer who with her new creations once breathed fresh air into a local dance scene on the verge of inertia.

Leading the ensemble that night was Komang Sudirga, a talented musician-cum-composer, with his trusted lieutenants; Gede Arsana and Pande Gede Eka Mardiana. Leading the Gerong chorus was none other than Ni Nyoman Candri, a legendary Arja performer whose crystal-like voice has mesmerized Bali for decades.  She was accompanied by her daughters, who have all inherited her mastery in Arja.

On the US side was the JACK Quartet, a string quartet named after the first letters of each of its members’ first names:  John Pickford Richards, Ari Streisfeld, Christopher Otto and Kevin McFarland. The influential daily, The Washington Post, once declared “The string quartet may be a 250-year-old contraption, but young, brilliant groups like the JACK Quartet are keeping it thrillingly vital,” while The New Yorker’s Alex Ross hailed the quartet’s performance as “exceptional” and “beautifully harsh”.

These were no second grade musicians, not a single one of them was a novice. Most have played frequently and astoundingly before large audiences, the rest have known their instruments — and the sounds are capable of producing — inside out for years. Nevertheless, the anxiety was obvious on their faces.

The ensemble was haunted by a vision that it would make a fatal mistake when playing one of the most difficult compositions. For weeks they had struggled to understand a new repertoire composed by lead composer, Brian Baumbusch, the student of microtonal music Kyle Gann and American gamelan expert Wayne Vitale. The compositions were eerily familiar for their ears but also distinctly strange for their minds and hands, a contradiction that resulted in several mistakes during a rehearsal one day before the performance.

On the other hand, the quartet, which in the last few days was humbled by the sounds of gamelan: “The sounds of our instruments are insignificant compared to the gamelan,” Ari was overheard saying, was also dealing with a similar problem. The collaboration required them to play at different tuning levels as well as reading sheet music dotted with a set of new symbols from the Balinese alphabet, representing the different sounds produced by gamelan instruments.

The nervousness was further aggravated by the fact that the audience was diverse. One group was noted scholars and artists, including Prof. Wayan Dibia, composer Komang Astita, and Wayan Gde Yudane, a young firebrand composer who is well-versed in both Balinese traditional music and western classical music. This was the discerning group that could spot any slight mistake as well as rule on whether the collaboration had succeeded in giving birth to a unified piece of art, or whether it had only produced a short-lived kitsch.

Another group was the Balinese laymen, who are very proud of their cultural heritage and would respond in hostile ways to any art experimentation they deemed as destructive to the integrity of that heritage.

The only person who was not nervous was Brian Baumbusch, who proclaimed that the collaborative project had reached perfection the previous evening, when “the gamelan and the string quartet had performed as a single group and had yielded nothing but harmonious melodies.”

His conviction turned into a shared belief when the musicians started playing the overture of Bali Alloy, a concert that featured five instrumental pieces, four dances and one dance drama.

The overture was a grand and rich musical epic and instantly drew the crowd’s amazement. Its patterns were intricate, a testament of Baumbusch’s virtuosity and his ability to push the musicians to reveal the astounding ability of their instruments.

The audience gave a roaring applause and all of sudden the whole amphitheater was transformed into a brighter, more joyful place. Bandem could not stop smiling, Sudirga’s moustache looked more glorious and the JACK Quartet began to enjoy the glittering Balinese traditional costume they were wearing.

The rest of the concert was a walk in the park for the musicians and the audience. Good music has always had the ability to lull people into that delightful state of relaxed bliss. Excellent music, like the one presented with Bali Alloy, elevate that state even higher.

When the concert ended, the musicians stood in the middle of the amphitheater to bow before the audience. The thundering sounds produced by the clapping hands, the yells of admiration, were an uncontested recognition that they had made it, and that west and east had finally met in the center, with the result being beautifully unique.

“The local artists should view this concert as a challenge to move forward, to create new things, fresher material, and to experiment with different kinds of music and instruments. This is an eye-opening concert,” Prof Wayan Dibia said.

An experimentalist himself, Dibia had for years lamented the fact that many local artists have been lulled by the majestic cultural heritage bestowed upon them by past generations. Consequently, for years the local art scene has experienced an esthetic “drought” due to the absence of any significant, breakthrough creations.

Among the impressed was JRX, the flamboyant front man of the famous Superman Is Dead (SID) band. When asked why a rock star had foregone the chance of a wild night of partying in his Kuta shack to attend a musical concert devoid of electric guitars, JRX grinned infectiously and answered, “I have lots of respect for the Bandem family, and the venue allowed people to come with beers.”

The concert itself, according to JRX, was a clash of musical roots, an esthetic contradiction and one that brought with it beautiful things.

“It’s mind blowing. It’s like a band of cowboys discharging a hail of bullets at the bullet-proof pecalang (Balinese traditional guardsmen),” he said of the musical tapestry woven together by the JACK Quartet and Makaradhwaja Ensemble.

For Made Bandem, Bali Alloy was simply a continuation of what had been initiated by the Balinese maestros of the past.

“Balinese culture is open. Interactions and collaborations have been taking place since time immemorial. That’s why we have Chinese, Indian, Malay and even Dutch elements in our traditional performing arts and cultural heritage. Cultural openness and creativity, continuity and change, are the very reasons why Balinese culture has evolved into a rich, diverse and majestically beautiful culture,” he said.