Name: Global Sounds on the Hill featuring Renowned Javanese Singer Peni Candra Rini
Start: 2025-10-17T19:00:00-04:00
Location: Hill Center

Global Sounds on the Hill featuring Renowned Javanese Singer Peni Candra Rini

Secret Planet and the Hill Center are absolutely thrilled to welcome back Peni Candra Rini on Friday Oct. 17! Her 2023 concert remains one of the most electric, sublime, and utterly singular we have ever presented. Described by the Kronos Quartet as “one of the world’s greatest singers,” the Indonesian composer Peni Candra Rini combines experimental music, dance, and shadow theatre to reimagine the Javanese legends she grew up with. Ticket link in bio 👀
Peni Candra Rini is a master of sindhen, a solo style of female gamelan singing, named for the female singers who perform with gamelan ensembles. These ensembles can consist of as many as five musicians up to full orchestra, reflecting the many contexts in which the music is performed—from accompanying village shadow puppet shows, to dance performances, to concert halls, and even court and temple music. Gamelan takes its name from the Indonesian phrase “to hammer,” and the music is played primarily on percussion instruments, featuring elaborately carved tuned bronze gongs, bronze-keyed instruments, and drums all tuned to the same five-note scale. They are often accompanied by zithers, woodwinds, fiddles, and vocals. The music is based around repetitive central melodies that are built and elaborated on with improvisations to achieve an effect known as ombak, which describes the shimmering, wavelike sonics of so much beaten metal.
She performs all over the world, from traditional performances in small Javanese villages to Carnegie Hall.Candra Rini’s work as a musician and as an academic on faculty at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts has received awards and support from the Aga Khan Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the U.S. State Department, the Fulbright Program, the Indonesian government, and more. She performs all over the world, from traditional performances in small Javanese villages to Carnegie Hall.
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