About this work:
A collaboration of three artists, Priscilla and Barton McLean for the music and Hasnul Saidon for the video, was formed to create an art work involving the oldest rainforest in the world and its special people in Borneo, as a tribute to the unique Malaysian style of bringing different voices together in one united song, and as an expression of the beauty and harmony of the fragile Borneo rainforest. The McLeans spent three months in Malaysian Borneo at the invitation of the Malaysian government in the autumn of 1996 recording bird, insect, and tribal songs, and inventing a synthesizer melodic-harmonic base in which to imbed and feature the nature and composed music. A recorded CD plays soundscapes of the Iban tribe, including their own gamelon dance music, plus the synthesizer music and bird/insect calls while the soprano soloist sings composed melodies and performs on sawblade gongs, all with minimal digital echoes and delays. The other performer performs on woodwinds and bows and strikes a musical bicycle wheel. The music, beginning with the soft, langorous synthesizer music, adds the nature sounds and finally the live performance, rising to a passionate climax and receding back to the insect and synthesizer sounds. An art video of Borneo tribal life and forests is shown as part of the performance.
Multimedia audience-interactive installation involving the peoples and natural environment of Malaysian Borneo, sponsored by the Malaysian Government (UNIMAS). Premiered in Oct., 1996 at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and subsequently broadcast over Malaysia TV-1 (national broadcast). Other performances include Siena College (1997), Asian Composers League (Manila-1997), S.E. Louisiana University (1997), Living Arts of Tulsa (1999), Ohio University-Athens (1999), Arts Center of Old Forge (3/5/99), Ohio University-Athens (5/8/99),
Jambori Rimba is availabe in a McLean Mix video performance on YouTube at:
http://youtu.be/hHvJGyaV7Xs
My website (where you can find my email as well)
http://www.fairpoint.net/~rainfor1/McLean_MAXMSP/Main_page.html
Phone: 518 658 3595
YouTube playlist (with 32 videos and counting)
https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3ACAB7BAD86CE7B4
Also check out my entry in Wikipedia
Although we, Barton and Priscilla McLean, hold the copyright, we nontheless hereby gladly authorize anyone to make copies and perform the work for noncommercial and/or educational purposes providing that our names are reasonably displayed as the composers. We do not under any circumstances authorize selecting portions of the work to appear intact in another person's composition, or to appear under any other composer's name, without our written signed authorization.