(b Yogyakarta, Java, 1964). Indonesian composer, brother of the composer Otok Sidarta. A son of the choreographer Bagong Kusudiardjo, he was active as a dancer by the age of six. As well as studying fine art in the Indonesian Arts Institute in Yogyakarta, Ferianto made an intensive study of gamelan music. He gained much compositional experience creating music for dance for his father. In 1994 he co-founded the experimental music and poetry group Kyai Kanjeng with Emha Ainun Najib, a popular poet, intellectual and Islamic figure. In the group Ferianto brought together diatonically-tuned gamelan instruments with Western instruments including the violin, keyboards and percussion. The influence of Najib as leader and speaker gave Ferianto's compositions within Kyai Kanjeng a distinctly Islamic flavour. After leaving the group in 1995 he formed Kua-Etnika, a group with the same instrumental concept, for which he has written increasingly mature works. He regularly appears with Kua-Etnika and the arranger Aminoto Kosim on a popular TV programme accompanying Indonesian pop singers. He is also well known for his compositions for music theatre. In Indonesian music he acts as a mediator between the worlds of experimental, gamelan and pop music.
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