New experiences come thick and fast in this little town. Today, Dot and I went down the 'markets in the mall' which take place on the last Sunday in each month. We usually stock up on such things as honey, jars of relish, punnets of interesting flowers for the garden, hand-crafted and fragrant bars of soap, fresh vegetables, interesting croissants, a cactus or two for my collection, occasional 'creatures' and-crafted from scrap metal, perhaps Dutch, German or Asian foods and so on.
In a way today was no different, except for one thing. Sure we acquired many of the above items, but who'd expect an Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra to be performing on-stage at one end of the mall - between the post-office and the old (historic) court-house. As you'll see from the pictures, the members of the orchestra were local, nearly all the instruments were percussion apart from a little and rather primitive flute-like object that looked and sounded little different from an Andean flute that I think Max once had. However, most of the percussion items were exquisitely tuned, like the xylophone objects in the front row and the bell-like objects on the right. And the music created was gentle and relaxing - altogether very pleasant.
I don't who set the performance up, but I do know that decades ago the University of New England's department of music acquired a set of gamelan instruments and performed concerts locally. That said, I haven't heard such a performance in years. By the way, the little girl in these pictures had escaped from her parents and was riveted by the spectacle.
AS
In a way today was no different, except for one thing. Sure we acquired many of the above items, but who'd expect an Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra to be performing on-stage at one end of the mall - between the post-office and the old (historic) court-house. As you'll see from the pictures, the members of the orchestra were local, nearly all the instruments were percussion apart from a little and rather primitive flute-like object that looked and sounded little different from an Andean flute that I think Max once had. However, most of the percussion items were exquisitely tuned, like the xylophone objects in the front row and the bell-like objects on the right. And the music created was gentle and relaxing - altogether very pleasant.
I don't who set the performance up, but I do know that decades ago the University of New England's department of music acquired a set of gamelan instruments and performed concerts locally. That said, I haven't heard such a performance in years. By the way, the little girl in these pictures had escaped from her parents and was riveted by the spectacle.
AS
No comments:
Post a Comment