New Music USA Online Library

Bill Alves is a composer and video artist engaged in the intersections of musical cultures, especially the gamelan music of Indonesia. He first studied the music of Java and Bali during a 1993-94 fellowship and is now the director of the HMC American Gamelan, a group that performs new compositions on Javanese instruments tuned to just intonation. His book Music of the Peoples of the World is now in its third edition from Cengage/Schirmer, and his recordings include The Terrain of Possibilities (EMF), Imbal-imbalan (Spectral Harmonies), and Mystic Canyon (MicroFest Records). His work with computer animation pioneer John Whitney inspired abstract computer animations with music, now released by the Kinetica Video Library as Celestial Dance. He has extensively explored non-standard tunings in his work and is co-director of MicroFest, the annual Southern California festival of microtonal music. Bill Alves teaches at Harvey Mudd College of the Claremont Colleges in Southern California.