Jody Diamond

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Jody Diamond (b. Pasadena, California, April 23, 1953) is an American composer, performer, writer, publisher, editor, and educator. She specializes in new music for the Indonesian gamelan and is considered an international expert on the subject.

She received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977, and an M.A. from San Francisco State University in 1979, pursuing interdisciplinary studies in music, anthropology, and education.

Diamond is a co-founder and co-director, with Larry Polansky, of Frog Peak Music (a composers' collective). She also founded (in 1981) and directs the American Gamelan Institute and edits its journal, Balungan.

She received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Fellowship to survey contemporary music in Indonesia (1988–89), as well as two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for work on Indonesian composers (1991), and for work on the gamelan music of Lou Harrison (2007).

She has created numerous works for gamelan, some based on songs from various traditions. Her works have been performed internationally. She is often a guest composer/performer with Gamelan Son of Lion, notably for their participation in the Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival in 1996.

Diamond teaches at Harvard University and Dartmouth College; she has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Mills College, Goddard College, Bates College, Franklin Pierce College, and Monash University in Australia.

[edit] Selected works

  • 1981 In that Bright World, voice, gamelan (based on Appalachian folk song)
  • 1982 Sabbath Bride, gamelan, 1982 (based on Hebrew melody)
  • 1984 Hard Times, chorus, violin, mandocello, gamelan (based on a Stephen Foster song)

[edit] Writings

Diamond, Jody (1990). "There is no They There." Musicworks, no. 47, pp. 12–23.

[edit] External links