Ensemble Nist-Nah

The Nist-Nah Ensemble was founded in 2019 as a hybrid gamelan and percussion ensemble under the direction of Will Guthrie, an Australian drummer and percussionist based in Nantes. The music of this eight-member collective is deeply influenced and inspired by traditional Indonesian gamelan forms as well as gong-based music from Southeast Asia. At the same time, the ensemble consciously distances itself from dry academic discourse or exotic clichés. Instead, the focus is on the immediate sound, the energetic interplay of the instruments, and a constant process of artistic development.

The project builds on Will Guthrie’s many years of work with tuned percussion and resonant metals. Gongs, singing bowls, and bells are used as melodic and harmonic material, interwoven with complex polyrhythmic and polymetric structures. The compositional forms draw inspiration from Guthrie’s travels to Indonesia and span a wide range: from the sublime, floating timelessness of the courtly Javanese gamelan sekatan, through the ecstatic, rousing repetition of the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, all the way to the shimmering, acoustic glitch of the contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat. In addition to a fascination with Indonesian musical culture, numerous other influences flow into the group’s sound, including Roscoe Mitchell’s percussion works, Henry Threadgill’s multidirectional improvisations, and intercultural experiments by musicians such as Trevor Watts, Michael Ranta, and Mike Cooper.

With eight members from a wide variety of musical backgrounds, Nist-Nah brings together a wealth of experience and regularly invites top-tier guest artists. Since 2024, the group has been in its second phase: it brings together a new generation of musicians from Nantes and presents a fresh program featuring new compositions. In addition to their stage performances, the members are deeply involved in music education: Through workshops at universities, schools, prisons, sociocultural centers, and squats, they use the gamelan’s fascinating instrumentation to bring people of all ages and backgrounds together. The production is handled by Studio D’En Haut in Nantes, France.