Richard North promoted to Continuing Lecturer

After joining the UC Santa Barbara Department of Music in Spring 2015 as Lecturer and Director of the UC Santa Barbara Gamelan Ensemble, Richard North was appointed to the position of Continuing Lecturer in Winter 2021. North was hired as an instructor of Indonesian and Malaysian Gamelan music at the department, within the World Music Performance series (A70J / A170J / A270J). He has been teaching and performing Gamelan music since 1972, having taught Gamelan at UC Santa Cruz, Hawaii Loa College (Kaneohe, Hawaii), North Seattle Community College, and San Jose State University.

North is recognized as an authority of the musical traditions of the ancient kingdom of Cirebon, Indonesia. He has made 12 trips to Cirebon since 1976, and has taught and lectured widely there about traditional Gamelan, including holding regular classes at the Kacirebonan Palace. He has received awards from the royal palace in Cirebon, as well as from the Indonesian government in recognition of his contributions to the preservation and growth of Gamelan music in Cirebon, and for his service to the people of Indonesia.

In August 2019, North made his twelfth trip to Indonesia, where he taught and performed gamelan in Cirebon. He continued the work of helping to revive lost gamelan pieces and musical forms and was honored, along with students from Santa Barbara, as a special guest performer at the 1st annual West Java Gong Renteng Festival. In the Fall of 2020, North and his wife, Felicia Danon North, served as keynote speakers for “The Gamelan of Cirebon,” part of the Gamelan Masters Lecture Series sponsored by the Nusantara Arts Foundation of New York.

Continuing Lecturer Richard North performing with the UC Santa Barbara Gamelan Ensemble during the UCSB World Music Series

In addition to leading the UC Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara community Gamelan ensembles, and teaching traditional music in Indonesia and California, a major focus of North’s has been recording albums of rare and ancient Gamelan pieces and distributing them to artists and teachers for free in Indonesia. They have been very well received, and are used as teaching material there. His fifth and sixth albums are being edited now, and will hopefully be released by summer of 2021.

At the request of the Sultan (king) of Kacirebonan Palace, North is involved in an ongoing project where he is creating notation and videos of now rare classical Gamelan pieces, materials that will be used in regular rehearsal at the Kacirebonan Palace.