This album follows a previous one – Musica Coniuncta - Bach to Cage through Gamelan – published by Yantra in 2014. It follows the same concept and actualization. While the first one mainly targeted Western classical pieces and had them in turn joined-up with gamelan and other world musics, the present album focuses on very recent creations by mostly young Balinese musicians and has their original gamelan pieces invaded and ‘contaminated’ by Western and diverse musical expressions.

In the concise notes attached to the first album, we read that the idea about Musica Coniuncta originated a few decades ago, suggested by a serendipitous happening. I had recorded two pieces from the radio at different times and, in order to save space, the pieces were recorded in mono on adjacent tracks of a two-track tape. Only at some time later I realized two things. First, the pieces had the same duration. Second, and more important, they sounded incredibly well fused when played together, which would naturally happen listening to the tape in stereo mode. The latter discovery was so startling that I refrained from doing anything about it, as if I had been given a mysterious gift or sign that was not to be investigated. Many years later I timidly began to try intentional operations of the kind, saw that they could work in certain circumstances, so I decided to consider it a permanent concept-project, at any time open to register hints that appeared worthy of elaboration. The Musica Coniuncta album of 2014 includes the serendipitous combination (of Ligeti and Stockhausen).

‘Active’ or ‘creative’ listening is at the roots of the inclination to intervene to change in various possible ways an existing piece of music. Arrangements and re-creations have been widely analyzed by the philosopher/musicologist Peter Szendy (b. 1966) in his book “Listen: A History of Our Ears.”

-John Noise Manis (2019)

This release spawned from conversations with Giovanni Sciarrino at his home in Castellamonte, Italy in 2017. During a brief sojourn from our residency at the Global Forest in Sankt Georgen, Germany Balot and I navigated the Alps to deliver recordings for his upcoming Gamelan Bach and Gamelan Debussy releases. In Castellamonte we spent several days drinking espresso, admiring Giovanni’s gong collection, surveying the grounds, and talking about life. We also listened to music.

One evening Giovanni surprised us with several tracks from his first Musica Coniuncta release—enjoyed on an impressive sound system piercing the stillness of the property from an elevated Pendopo that dominates the landscape and houses a large collection of gamelan instruments. Balot and I were unprepared for what we heard. Two pieces of music entangled serendipitously as if their combination had been destined from the start. We sat in the grass alone—Giovanni had ventured inside to attend to the music—and we began to speculate about the origins of what we were hearing (Pangkur-Barber): had the Javanese macapat vocalist (pesindhen Nyi Cendaniraras) recorded while listening to Samuel Barber’s Adagio? Giovanni returned with an answer, no.

Musica Coniuncta resonated with our recently hatched plans to seek remixes of the Insitu Sessions and over breakfast the following morning Balot and I asked Giovanni if he was interested in attempting a similar experiment with recordings from the Insitu Recordings catalogue. With reluctance and surprise in equal measure, he agreed.

Roughly one year later a complete album arrived in our inbox with a request for feedback from the Balinese artists. Those recordings were dispatched to the respective artists on Bali and based on their feedback Giovanni made revisions. The resulting album, Musica Coniuncta 2, is a co-release, appearing on Yantra (2019) and Insitu Recordings (2020).

-Jonathan Adams (2020)