(b Sukoharjo, Java, 21 June 1951). Indonesian composer and gamelan player. Suwardi, whose forename is pronounced ‘A.L.’, entered the conservatory of classical Javanese music in Surakarta in 1969 then studied at the Indonesian Academy for the Performing Arts (1973–81); he subsequently taught there. He began in 1974 to realise his aim of developing indigenous classical music so that it would become one of the foundations of contemporary Indonesian music. In 1976 Suwardi was involved in an experimental project led by Franki Raden to produce music for the film November 1828, directed by Teguh Karya, which won the music prize at the 1978 Indonesian Film Festival. Adopting Raden's approach of treating gamelan instruments as autonomous sound sources, Suwardi and his colleagues searched for new technical performance possibilities. His experiments with the construction of gamelan instruments have resulted in a gender (metallophone) with motor-driven resonators and a gambang (xylophone) made out of metal pipe. As a composer of new indigenous classical music he has an extraordinary sensitivity towards matters of intonation and timbre, as apparent in such works as Gender (1984) and Nostalgia (1991). He studied ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and in 1986–7 was a Fulbright visiting scholar to the USA. Suwardi is exceptional in having mastered the practice of both traditional and contemporary gamelan music to the same high degree.
FRANKI RADEN