Echoes of Gamelan explores the influence of gamelan music on Western composers, as well as how our music perception changes depending on the context. Colin McPhee’s transcriptions of Balinese ceremonial music are interwoven with pieces by Godowsky, Debussy, and Holst. This juxtaposition prompts us to listen to each piece from outside the Western tradition and to experience compositional time differently. Debussy heard gamelan music for the first time at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. This exposure made a huge impact on his development and by extension on many composers to come. Brian Baumbusch’s Penrose Prologue, commissioned by ZOFO, is inspired by gamelan heterophony. The program closes with pieces by Balinese composers Putu Septa and Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti. Putu Septa’s piece Social Cohesion is written for ZOFO while Srayamurtikanti’s piece Speech Delay was originally written for Balinese shadow-puppet theater instruments and transcribed for ZOFO by Brian Baumbusch. Just as Debussy did with Western classical music more than a hundred years ago, Putu Septa and Srayamurtikanti are exploring the outer reaches of traditional gamelan music.

Mind Meld brings together stunning duet works by four noted 20th century composers and pianists who knew each other, learned from each other, and sometimes shared the bench. As young students at Harvard, Leonard Bernstein and Harold Shapero teamed up as a piano duo before Bernstein’s career exploded. Shapero wrote his Sonata for the two of them. Stravinsky read through the one–piano–four–hand score of his Rite of Spring together with Debussy in the home of their friend Louis Laloy, before any orchestra had touched the work. Debussy later wrote to Stravinsky about the Rite of Springas a “beautiful nightmare.” Released by Sono Luminus in 2012, ZOFO’s album Mind Meld was nominated for Grammy Awards in the categories of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Producer of the Year, Classical. The album and live performance program continue to attract positive critical attention around the world.

Phantasma, phantom, fantasy, fantastic! In this program we explore the world of wonder and imagination. In Casella’s Pupazzetti and Stravinsky’s three movements of Petrushka puppets are coming to life and, unfortunately, experience spurned love and jealousy. Sounds appear as Fata Morganas in Synaesthesia, written by ZOFO’s own Keisuke Nakagoshi. We pay a visit to hybrid creatures of Roman and Greek mythology in both Debussy’s Prélude à l’après–midi d’un faune and Pavkovic’s Chimaera. Originally composed for player piano, the latter is brought to musical life with beautiful melodic lines, accompanied and interrupted by voices of mechanical wildness. The program closes with Dukas’ sparkling L’Apprenti Sorcier, based on Goethe’s ballade “Der Zauberlehrling” and featured in the Disney film “Fantasia” (1940).

ZOFORBIT takes the listener on a voyage through outer space. Estonian composer Urmas Sisask’s The Spiral Symphony sets the mood with otherworldly sounds, featuring innovative inside–piano techniques that evoke a sense of the cosmos. The short movements serve as a sonic spaceship to transport the audience from one planet or star to another. Starting on Mars, the Bringer of War, the journey continues to tour Gustav Holst’s The Planets and pays visits to the stars Alpha Centauri and Beta Cygni as musically envisioned by George Crumb in his one–piano–four–hands masterpiece, Celestial Mechanics. David Lang’s gravity gives the impression of falling without ever landing. Before taking off for infinity, we alight on a planet for the last time—Venus, the Bringer of Peace.