Kali, 2000 [Enlarge in New Window]

Jarrad Powell: Kali

Jarrad Powell's career has been a symphony of sounds from around the world. The prolific, Seattle-based composer runs a Javanese gamelan ensemble and a contemporary orchestra that focuses largely on works by Asian composers. He also writes electro-acoustic music for his own dance company. If you ask the soft-spoken artist to describe what he does, he might tell you--in soothing, melodic tones--that he leads the complete musical life. He doesn't exaggerate. For in addition to all that, he builds instruments and produces concerts. He writes music, teaches music, talks about music, performs music. And to think he started out as a kid in Montana who quit taking piano lessons.

"Growing up in Montana, I didn't really have a musical culture," Powell says. "I started taking classical piano lessons when I was five. I didn't stay with it. I branched out. And of course I played in band in school. But as far as a native musical culture that one felt deeply connected to, that wasn't there."

Powell discovered the music that felt like a creative home only once he'd left Big Sky Country behind. After studying English, creative writing, and world religion as an undergraduate, he got his master's in composition at Mills College in Oakland, California where the words of his teacher, composer Lou Harrison, led him to Javanese gamelan. "He said that every young composer should study the music of another culture in depth," remembers Powell. "So I ended up developing an interest in gamelan music. It's one of those things where you hear something and you just have an affinity for it. I was fascinated by the musical structures, the sound of the instruments."

Since 1983, Powell has performed regularly with Gamelan Pacifica, an ensemble he also directs. Travelling with the group in the early '80s, he had the opportunity to connect with a circle of Indonesian musicians whose work would become intimately linked with his own, ultimately resulting in a stream of multicultural projects. One recent example is Kali, a contemporary opera told from the perspective of the Hindu goddess of death. "In the mythological story," Powell explains, "Brahma falls asleep during creation and wakes up and things are completely out of control. There's just abundance and proliferation, and he has to find a solution. So he charges Kali with the responsibility of being Death. Kali refuses and stands on one leg for a thousand million years and then she stands on the other leg for a thousand million years, but finally she yields to Brahma's demands."

Powell was profoundly struck by what he calls "the notion of Kali not only representing terror and destruction but also compassion" and approached his frequent collaborator, Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo, and Indonesian writer Goenawan Mohamed about developing a piece together. After a series of workshops in both Seattle and Jakarta, the piece was performed in Seattle in June 2000.

Originally an instrumental piece with three singers, Kali has since evolved into a full-fledged opera. The newer version has an expanded cast, more elaborate staging, and scoring for a more conventional ensemble. "I think the essence is the language," Powell says. "Goenawan's words are stunning. So, having a piece driven by the libretto, we realized it was really an opera and we had to treat it like that. It's really a different piece now, although it grows out of what we discovered in those early performances."

During the course of Kali's progress, Powell's schedule has remained jam-packed with other projects. He rattles off a list that revolves around his work as director of Gamelon Pacifica, director of the Seattle Creative Orchestra, and partner in the dance company Mary Sheldon Scott/Jarrad Powell Performance. He pauses to consider if he's forgotten anything. "Then I also teach at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. I teach gamelan and a world music class," he says. "So there's this idea of musical connections across cultural boundaries and trying to bridge those gaps and make work that reflects that consciousness. I'm pretty diverse in that way." Powell's measured voice spills forth like a lullaby, until he uncharacteristically stops and laughs softly. "I'm a Gemini, so I need a lot of stimulation."

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Performance > Music | The Human Animal | Fantasy & Myth | Religion & Spirituality | Northwest / Great Plains | 2000