Andy Channing

Gamelan musician and composer. Andy is a self-taught drummer with an experimental rock and improvisation background and a degree in mathematics rather than music, He first heard Balinese and Javanese gamelan in the early 1980s through a friend's girlfriend's father's LP collection and 'just fell in love with it', initially expressing this fascination in his own performance by extending his drum kit 'with bits of beer can and bits of metal and things' and working gamelan-inspired rhythms and textures into improvisations with his band. In 1989 he went to Java for three years on the Darmasiswa programme, where he studied 'Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, Banyumas music. On his return to the UK he began teaching workshops just as the British gamelan scene was expanding rapidly and councils, universities and schools up and down the country began buying gamelans sets. His longstanding interest in Balinese gong kebyar and angklung and Sundanese degung, have made him one of the country's broadest-ranging experts in gamelan music. As a composer, he falls very much in the camp of those who prefer minimally- or un-notated music which can be taught aurally: none of his own works have scores – at least,not that the players get to see – and he expresses a strong preference for music that does not involve the composer ‘turning up with twenty sheets of music and saying “This is what we're playing”.