I Wayan Sadra | en

I Wayan Sadra (1 August 1953, Denpasar, Bali) is an Indonesian composer and gamelan player.

Sadra learned to play gamelan when he was a child. After studying classical Balinese music at the Balinese Conservatory for the Performing Arts in Denpasar, I Wayan Sadra went to Jakarta in 1973 and became acquainted with contemporary art. Sadra left Bali after he met choreographer Sardono W. Kusuma in 1974. That was when he performed his work as an illustration for Dongeng dari Dirah (Dirah’s Tale), a dance drama created by Sardono. In the same year, along with Sardono and choreographer Hajar Satoto, he performed the dance drama around Europe for four months.

A highly accomplished player of the Balinese gamelan, Sadra taught the gamelan at the Jakarta Fine Arts Institute (1975–8) and Balinese music at the Indonesian University (1978–80), then moved to Surakarta to study and teach composition, music criticism, and Balinese music at the Indonesian Academy for the Performing Arts (1983–7).

At the forefront of an emerging group of composers trained in the indigenous classical musics of particular regions of Indonesia, he has departed from his background in gamelan music. His works display his extraordinary musical imagination and his skill in employing indigenous compositional techniques and new ways of playing traditional instruments. In 1979, Sadra established Sonoseni Ensemble, a music group which, according to Sadra, had more emphasis on instrument exploration, not fully depending on mainstream (pop) music.

He has toured abroad as both composer and musician, and in 1991 was awarded the New Horizon Award for artistic innovation by the International Society for Arts, Sciences and Technology in Berkeley, California. .