This performance is by the William Winant Percussion Group from November 5, 2010, at the Berkeley Art Museum for the L@TE series.
From the program notes:
Threnody for Carlos Chávez (1978) by Lou Harrison
Harrison began composing for traditional Javanese and Sundanese gamelan instruments in 1976, soon using the gamelan as a backup orchestra for Western solo instruments. Among the earliest pieces to call for this type of cross-cultural mixture was the 1978 Threnody for Carlos Chávez for viola and Sundanese gamelan. Harrison's gamelan compositions always bear a personal stamp. In this case, he applied a metric system characteristic of medieval Western music to a Javanese form, the ketawang. Traditional gamelan music is always in duple meter, characteristically featuring several layers with various degrees of elaboration over a basic melody. In the Threnody for Carlos Chávez, however, Harrison drew on his knowledge of Western medieval music to explore multiple layers of triple meter.