Gamelan Alligator Joy is the name of a set of Javanese gamelan instruments owned by The Western Front in Vancouver, Canada. In 2018, Dr. Hartana led a series of workshops with community members at the arts centre. At the completion of the workshops, the ensemble performed at the Roundhouse Community Centre. One of the works performed is Baureksa KailiJaVan composed and arranged by Sutrisno Hartana, documented in the video below.
Busy Island Gamelan was founded by Sutrisno while he attended university, completing his Ph.D coursework in Victoria, BC. The July 2012 performance recorded for “Busy Island: A Gamelan Documentary”, featured additional players as guest artists. The group and Sutrisno were very fortunate to welcome a well known gamelan teacher, Professor Djoko Walujo (on the far left playing rebab in the image below), to add his expertise to their ensemble performance. Professor Djoko Walujo was one of Sutrisno’s gamelan instructors from Java, who is now teaching at CalArts University in Valencia, California USA.
Sutrisno Hartana collaborated extensively with the Vancouver Community Gamelan Society to create and perform Semar’s Journey. More information about this project can be found on Alexsandra Dulic’s page, listing the credits and showing additional photos.
Sutrisno has performed in many productions with community gamelan groups. He has also assisted in producing events, composing gamelan music and performing Indonesian shadow puppetry for countless events in the Vancouver and Seattle areas.
A professional performance by Sutrisno Hartana, both as a composer and playing an instrumental part, in the Ghost Project.
A short documentary about wayang produced by Simon Fraser University featuring an interview with Dr. Hartana.