An original composition by a Bates senior from West Virginia is featured in a concert by the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

“Gamelan” refers to a broad genre of traditional Indonesian music played primarily on percussion instruments. Barbara Byers, an interdisciplinary major in music and dance from Elkins, W.Va., composed and will dance a piece titled “Monkey” that’s included on the program. Byers studied various traditional performance disciplines, including gamelan, while in Indonesia last summer on a Phillips Fellowship from Bates.

The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The program comprises a variety of instrumental and vocal music, including a contemporary arrangement of a traditional lullaby. Also included is a solo masked dance that originates in Cirebon, a city on the north coast of West Java, and portrays a character from the Hindu epic “Ramayana.”

Assistant Professor of Music Gina Fatone directs the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra. The ensemble is composed of students and faculty members Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance, and Jennifer Woodruff, visiting assistant professor of music. The concert will also feature the vocals of a Bates alumna, Lisa McClellan ’09.

Bates College has gamelan instruments from Central Java and West Java, Indonesia. The instrument set named Gamelan Mawar Mekar (“Blossom of Inspiration”), acquired by the College in 2001, is composed of iron and brass pieces and was made in Central Java in 1997.

A smaller bronze chamber ensemble from West Java, of a type called gamelan degung, was donated to the college in 2007. The concert will feature both sets.

In addition to its public performances, the orchestra makes a distinctive contribution to ceremonial events at Bates and is increasingly integrated into the arts and cultural curriculum.

The Bates College Gamelan Orchestra, joined by professional guest artists from Indonesia, performs in concert at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 14, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

A few days earlier, a public workshop in Indonesian dance featuring two guest artists from Saturday’s program takes place at noon Wednesday, March 11, in the Olin concert hall.

Both events are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The March 14 program is dedicated entirely to West Javan, or Sundanese, music. Guest artists include Wahyu Roche, a virtuosic drummer, and Ening Rumbini, a dancer who specializes in “jaipongan,” a popular Sundanese dance. Roche and Rumbini will perform both by themselves and with the orchestra. They will also lead the March 11 dance workshop.

The concert also features singer Rina Oesman, who performs in a classical Indonesian style, and her accompanist, Andrew Bouchard, who plays the “kacapi,” a stringed instrument similar to the zither. All four artists live in Bandung, West Java.

The Bates orchestra will perform music from a variety of Indonesian genres including “tembang Sunda,” a formal style of sung Sundanese poetry, and “degung kawih,” an ornamented style of singing accompanied by the “gamelan degung,” a smaller chamber ensemble used in traditional music of the aristocracy.

Roche is a member of Jugala, a pioneering jaipongan group in Indonesia. The group opened for Mick Jagger in Jakarta in 1989. Roche currently performs as a freelance musician for several groups, has written music for the influential workshop theater founded by the playwright Rendra, and recently released his debut album as a vocalist.

Rumbini is a leading dancer of jaipongan, a modern popular style based on martial arts and village forms of dance. She has performed throughout Southeast Asia.

Unusually for a woman, Oesman studied with several master musicians and began performing when she was young. After winning first place in a prestigious vocal contest, she became a member of Jugala and began to tour internationally.

Bouchard began playing gamelan in 1984 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, under the direction of master drummer Undang Sumarna. From 1995 to 1998 Bouchard studied a variety of traditional instruments in West Java. He received a master’s in ethnomusicology from UCSC.

In addition to public performances, the Bates Gamelan Orchestra makes a distinctive contribution to ceremonial events and is increasingly integrated into the arts and cultural curriculum.

The orchestra will perform on two sets of instruments, a complete Central Javanese set made by an artisan called Mulyadi, and a degung set acquired by the college in 2007 through the generosity of a private donor, Tony Lydgate, of Kaua’i, Hawaii. The degung instruments were made in Bandung, West Java, in 2006 by Asep Ahum.

With the theme Musical Legacies of South and Southeast Asia, Bates College students and faculty, as well as internationally esteemed performers, present the college’s World Music Week from March 5 through March 15.

Performers include the Bates College Orchestra and Bates Gamelan Orchestra, Indian dancer Aniruddha Knight and Indonesian composer Nano S. (See the complete schedule.)

Sponsored by the Bates music department, festival events are open to the public at no cost. Except as noted, performances take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. For more information, call 207-786-6135.

“This year’s concept pays tribute to the profound traditional artistic roots of these regions, but at the same time acknowledges the strong innovative spirit evident in this year’s artists,” says festival organizer Gina Fatone, assistant professor of music. “The artists hold a deep reverence for their heritages, yet are driven to push the boundaries of tradition, creating something vibrant and new.”

Workshops begin the series on March 5. In a concert at 8 p.m. March 7, the Bates College Orchestra offers a program reflecting influences from around the globe, as well as works inspired by music of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Hiroya Miura directs the orchestra.

Expert in the classical South Indian music and dance genre called “bharata natyam,” dancer Aniruddha Knight and his ensemble offer workshops on March 5 and 6, and a performance at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 8. On that occasion, Knight and the ensemble perform From the Heart of a Tradition, a new interpretation of this traditional form.

Knight’s dance reveals the profound musicality, mastery of technique and improvisational skill that distinguish his family’s hereditary style. But he also represents the face of young America: biracial, bicultural and, as an artist, completely contemporary. He and his ensemble were among 15 companies to receive production and touring support from the National Dance Project in 2007 and 2008, and their 2005 tour was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Bates residency of Knight and his ensemble is made possible by a grant from the National Dance Project, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Closing World Music Week is a performance by the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra, joined by guest artists including Indonesian composer Nano S., at 8 p.m. March 15.

“Gamelan” refers to the large bronze percussion orchestras of Java and Bali, Indonesia. The Bates Gamelan Orchestra performs traditional and contemporary music of West and Central Java, as well as new music for gamelan by North American composers.

Nano S. is widely viewed as one of Indonesia’s most important and influential musicians. He has taught and toured extensively in Japan, Canada and the U.S. At Bates, he is a Mellon Learning Associate, supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Also performing are drummer Undang Sumarna, bamboo flute player Burhan Sukarma and dancer Ben Arcangel.

Featuring the college gamelan orchestra and a Cambodian music and dance troupe, this year’s World Music Weekend at Bates College takes place Friday and Saturday, March 24 and 25, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Titled “The Ramayana in Southeast Asia,” the weekend explores adaptations of the ancient, seminal epic from India titled “Ramayana.”

The Cambodian Classics Ensemble, a Washington, D.C.-based performance group, offers a dance demonstration and workshop at 1:30 p.m. Friday. At 8 p.m., the ensemble performs scenes from the “Raemker,” the Cambodian adaptation of the Hindu epic. A pre-concert lecture takes place at 7:30 p.m.

At 4 p.m. Saturday, the college gamelan orchestra, Bates dancers and guest artists perform “The Abduction of Sita,” an episode from an Indonesian version of “Ramayana.”

All events take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St., and are open to the public at no cost. The festival is sponsored by the Freeman Foundation. For more information, please call 207-786-6135 or 207-753-6968.

The 2,000-year-old “Ramayana” is a long, complex tale exploring the conflict between good and evil. Its numerous plot twists include a dynastic struggle, a hero’s exile, the kidnapping of his wife and a grand-scale battle between demons and gods.

Though of Indian origin, “it’s a cultural icon for all of South and Southeast Asia,” says Gina Fatone, assistant professor of music and the program’s organizer. “It’s amazing how one epic poem can travel and have many different variants.”

The “Ramayana,” she says, is “often referred to as a story that has become indigenized everywhere it has gone. The characters’ names sometimes change and details of the performance sometimes change, but the core elements of the story remain the same.”

The Cambodian Classics Ensemble consists of professional musicians and dancers, most of whom came from Cambodia since the mid-1970s in response to civil strife there. Its members include music director Chum Ngek, a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow who has mastered more than 20 instruments and diverse traditional genres.

Performing with the ensemble is Sok Sokheun, a Cambodian dancer living in Portland.

Directed by Fatone, the Bates Gamelan Mawar Makar (“Blossom of Inspiration”) plays music from West and Central Java, in Indonesia. “Gamelan” refers to a traditional Indonesian percussion orchestra composed mainly of tuned gongs, metal-keyed instruments and drums, and sometimes featuring voice and stringed instruments.

Joining the gamelan for the Saturday performance are Undang Sumarna and dancer Ben Arcangel. Sumarna, a longtime mentor to Fatone and an Indonesian master drummer, has taught gamelan at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for nearly three decades. He is serving as guest director of the gamelan during a weeklong residency at Bates, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Also a Mellon Learning Associate, Ben Arcangel is a Filipino-American dancer expert in Indonesian dance. A performer and graduate student based in San Francisco, he will coach and perform with the Bates dancers.

Sagaree Sengupta, a member of the Asian studies faculty at Bates, gives an introductory talk for the Saturday program.

The public is invited to attend at no charge. For more information, please call 207-786-8391.

The story of a mother’s quest to bury her child, The Memory of Salt takes place in the aftermath of the Greek conquest of Troy (although the play’s simultaneous debut with the Brad Pitt film is coincidental).

“It looks at the question of desire and the degree to which it makes us human and binds us to one another,” says Maurizio, “or entraps us and compels us to do things that are perhaps not very good.”

The play features choreography by the incoming head of the Bates dance program and music by faculty and a resident scholar involved with the Bates gamelan, a type of Indonesian musical ensemble. In theatrical terms, Salt borrows from two traditions: ancient Greek and Japanese “noh” drama.

But it represents the culmination of a collaboration among Maurizio, director John Ambrosino — a 2001 Bates graduate and founder of the Boston theater company the Animus Ensemble — and the late Ellen Seeling, a theatrical designer and associate professor of theater at Bates.

The three shared a “vision of world theater,” said Maurizio, and earlier collaborated on Tereus in Fragments, which Maurizio wrote, Seeling designed and Ambrosino directed last year, both at Bates and in Boston with his own company to good reviews.

In particular, Maurizio, Seeling and Ambrosino were intrigued by the stylized aspects of ancient Greek theater and noh, traditions that emerged from very different cultures and historical periods but had in common a variety of formal devices or practices.

“Both began in outdoor theaters,” Maurizio says. “They began in religious festivals, they used all-male actors wearing masks, they involved music and dance, they have choruses, and they have only one to two protagonists.”

Maurizio credits the creative vision of her colleagues for the inspiration to write the piece. In particular, she says, “this play could not have happened without Ellen and I collaborating together three or four years ago” on other projects.

In the spirit of that collaboration, faculty from other areas contribute to the Salt production. Carol Dilley, visiting assistant professor of dance, provides choreography, while the music is created by visiting Fulbright scholar Joko Susilo, working with the Bates College Gamelan Mawar Mekar, led by Gina Fatone and Rose Pruiksma of the music faculty.

The Costas and Mary Maliotis Charitable Foundation provided significant funding for the project. Ambrosino’s participation is supported by the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities at Bates.

Otong Rasta and his son, Atik Rasta, give a performance using wooden-rod puppets at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 4, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. They will be accompanied by students studying gamelan, the traditional Indonesian gong-chime orchestra, in the springtime course “Performing Musical Art of Indonesia.”

The puppet-carving demonstration takes place at 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 5, in Olin Arts Center’s Room 243.

The Rastas’ visit is sponsored by the Freeman Foundation. For more information about the performance and demonstration, call 207-786-6135.

Otong Rasta is a leading musician, teacher and performer of “wayang golek,” a form of wooden-rod puppet theater. He specializes in a repertoire of stories that tell of Java’s conversion to Islam.

Atik Rasta is also a puppeteer and is a professional drummer in the traditional Sundanese style. The pair come to Bates as part of an educational tour also including the University of Pittsburgh, Kenyon College and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The Sundanese performing arts are distinguished from Central Javanese and Balinese traditions by a style, sometimes described as “spicier” than the others, that involves a great deal of playfulness and humor.

Typically, wayang golek performances take place at night and last at least six hours. They are given for many different reasons including weddings and various anniversaries, giving thanks to the gods, or asking for a good harvest, good luck or protection from evil. The stories are often taken from the Hindu epics “The Ramayana” and “The Mahabharata.” The puppets are beautifully carved and painted, and adorned with lovely, colorful costumes. Typically around 60 puppets are used during a performance.

In addition to performing and teaching Bates students during their visit, the Rastas will demonstrate puppet theater to local schools including Lewiston’s Pettengill School.

With offices in New York City and Stowe, Vt., the Freeman Foundation was created by AIG Insurance Company co-founder Mansfield Freeman to promote better relationships and understanding between the United States and the countries of East Asia. In December 2001, the foundation gave Bates a four-year, $400,000 grant intended to enhance and energize the study of Asia and Asian culture across the curriculum.

Bates College presents performances of Indonesian shadow puppetry and gamelan music at 8 p.m. Friday, March 19, and 3 p.m. Saturday, March 20, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The performances are open to the public at no cost.

The performers are the Gamelan Mawar Mekar (“blossom of inspiration”), Bates’ own gamelan orchestra; singer Jody Diamond, a New-Hampshire based international expert on gamelan; and puppetry master Joko Susilo, a visiting Fulbright scholar at Bates this year and a lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Bates is unique in Maine and distinguished nationally for its resources in these performing arts, including the 4-year-old gamelan ensemble and an extensive collection of shadow puppets — around 250 — on permanent loan by David Eisler, of Dover, N.H.

The gamelan is the traditional orchestra of Java and Bali that is most familiar to the rest of the world. Its gongs, drums and xylophones are played according to systems of pitch and timing very different from typical Western music. The players in the Bates ensemble include students and faculty, and work under the direction of visiting assistant professors of music Gina Fatone and Rose Pruiksma.

The shadow-puppet story for the performances, Pruiksma explains, comes from the Mahabharata, an ancient Hindu epic of India brought to Java by Indian colonists hundreds of years ago. Titled Bima Builds a Kingdom, the tale depicts the character Bima cutting down a magic forest, fighting giants, falling under a magic spell and being freed by an ogre.

“While a traditional performance of this story could last all night, our version will be about an hour and a half long,” Pruiksma says.

The gamelan will also take part in Bates’ World Music Weekend next month. The group will perform with the Bates Steel Pan Orchestra on Saturday, April 3, and will welcome MIT’s Balinese Gamelan Galak Tika for a concert on Sunday, April 4.