Brian Baumbusch (b. 1987) is a composer/performer based in Northern California working at the nexus between contemporary American and contemporary Indonesian music. Wayne Vitale (b. 1956) is a composer and educator who has long been inspired by the music of Bali, Indonesia. He has studied and collaborated with many of Bali's finest musicians and ensembles.
Mikrokosma (2014-15) is an exploration in sound and light of the "microcosms" of Bali-Hindu cosmology, where the universe is reflected and re-created in all its parts. The underlying concepts of the piece, revealed in form, proportions, meters (every movement is partially or entirely in 11), colors, sequence, and symmetry, are a direct interpretation of the pengider buana, the "turning of the universe."
The work is a cross-cultural endeavor. Mikrokosma utilizes musical techniques and concepts that fuse or juxtapose Balinese and Western new-music traditions, particularly American minimalist music and its many offshoots. One of these fusions takes place in the realm of timbre and tuning. The instruments were conceived, constructed, and tuned by Baumbusch. Although he started from a Balinese conception in shaping the basic scale, recent research on the inharmonic partials (overtones) of metal keys and gong chimes informed the fine-tuning process, yielding a unique scale and sonic world.
