Gamelan Son of Lion is a new-music American gamelan

American gamelan

American gamelan could refer to both instruments and music; the term has been used to refer to gamelan-style instruments built by Americans, as well as to music written by American composers to be played on gamelan instruments...

 ensemble based in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. The group was founded in 1976 by Barbara Benary

Barbara Benary

Barbara Benary is an American composer and ethnomusicologist specializing in Indonesian and Indian music.In 1976 she co-founded Gamelan Son of Lion with Philip Corner and Daniel Goode; she also constructed most of the group's instruments...

 (who constructed most of the instruments), Philip Corner

Philip Corner

Philip Corner is an American composer, action musician, trombone/alphornist, sometime vocalist, pianist-improvisor, theorist-educator, graphic score designer, and visual artist, collage&assembleur, calligrapher.-Biography:After The High School of Music & Art in New York City, Philip Corner...

, and Daniel Goode

Daniel Goode

Daniel Goode is an American composer and clarinetist.Daniel Goode was born in New York City. After graduating in 1957 from Oberlin College, he studied composition at Columbia University with Henry Cowell and Otto Luening, receiving an MA 1962...

. It is a composers' collective as well as repertory ensemble. Current composers in the group in addition to the co-founders are: David Demnitz, Laura Liben, Jody Kruskal, Lisa Karrer, Marnen Laibow-Koser, Jody Diamond

Jody Diamond

Jody Diamond is an American composer, performer, writer, publisher, editor, and educator. She specializes in traditional and new music for Indonesian gamelan and is active internationally as a scholar, performer, and publisher.-Biography:She received a B.A. from the University of California,...

, and David Simons.

Gamelan Son of Lion's keyed instruments have bars constructed of iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

, in the Javanese

Music of Indonesia

The music of Indonesia demonstrates its cultural diversity, the local musical creativity, as well as subsequent foreign musical influences that shaped contemporary music scenes of Indonesia. Nearly thousands of Indonesian islands having its own cultural and artistic history and character. This...

 style. The group uses both the pelog

Pelog

Pelog is one of the two essential scales of gamelan music native to Bali and Java, in Indonesia. The other scale commonly used is called slendro. Pelog has seven notes, but many gamelan ensembles only have keys for five of the pitches...

and slendro

Slendro

Slendro is a pentatonic scale, one of the two most common scales used in Indonesian gamelan music, the other being pélog.-Tuning:...

tuning systems, sometimes in conjunction with one another within a single composition.

Discography

• 1979 - Gamelan In The New World (Folkways
  Folkways Records
  Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
  
  )
• 1992 - Macedonian Air Drumming (Bridge) - includes 1 track performed by GSOL
• 1992 - Interaction: New Music for Gamelan (Leonardo/ISAST) - includes 2 tracks performed by GSOL
• 1995 - New Gamelan/New York (GSOL Records)
• 1996 - Gamelan as a Second Language (GSOL)
• 2002 - Bending the Gending (GSOL)
• 2004 - The Complete Gamelan in the New World (Locust Music
  Locust Music
  Locust Music is a Chicago-based independent record label founded in 2001....
  
  )
• 2004 - Prismatic Hearing (Tzadik
  Tzadik
  Tzadik/Zadik/Sadiq is a title given to personalities in Jewish tradition considered righteous, such as Biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The root of the word ṣadiq, is ṣ-d-q , which means "justice" or "righteousness", also the root of Tzedakah...
  
  )
• 2005 - Metal Notes (Locust Music)
• 2006 - Sun on Snow (New World
  New World Records
  New World Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in American music. The label was established in 1975 through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to produce a 100 disc anthology covering 200 years of American music....
  
  )
• 2007 - Dragon Toes (GSOL)
• 2008 - Sonogram (Innova)