Daily Inspiration: Meet Los Angeles Gamelan Festival Team Adam Berg, Matthew Clough-Hunter, Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti, Kerri Shak

Today we’d like to introduce you to Los Angeles Gamelan Festival Team Adam Berg, Matthew Clough-Hunter, Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti, Kerri Shak.

Hi Los Angeles Gamelan Festival Team, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
On June 14 & 15, 2025, the gamelan community in Los Angeles will hold a family-friendly event on Father’s Day weekend: The Los Angeles Gamelan Festival. This event will celebrate the 50th Teaching Anniversary of Bapak I Nyoman Wenten and Ibu Nanik Wenten. Bapak Wenten and Ibu Nanik have dedicated decades of their lives to teaching gamelan and dance in California, and are central in the sharing of Balinese gamelan and dance with students in the US. This celebration is an opportunity to bring together the large gamelan community and Indonesian diaspora across the US in one festival.

As an event, the Los Angeles Gamelan Festival seeks to unite the massive gamelan network spread across the United States. Gamelan and Indonesian dance are offered at many universities and colleges. It has piqued the interest of many composers worldwide, incorporating unique elements into their music or producing full traditional and experimental gamelan pieces. Choreographers across different styles also work to create dance works and dramas. As artists, we do not have a central system to connect us, and we are not always aware of the work people accomplish. Through LAGF, we hope to connect artists and groups to one another as they continue studying and performing Indonesian gamelan and dance.

Spearheaded by Adam Berg, the LAGF team works to bring this vision to life, with Producer Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti and Co-Producer Matthew Clough-Hunter, the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia as the host, and Burat Wangi Gamelan the home base. Through this Festival, the team aims to not only to connect people across the country through gamelan and dance, but also to nurture artistic relationships across cities, states, countries, and generations.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Preparing for the Los Angeles Gamelan Festival has definitely not been a smooth ride.

For LAGF, we are featuring 15+ gamelan groups, 20+ vendors, and around 200+ artists, some of them traveling all the way from Indonesia. Finding the perfect time slot and coordinating plans is always a challenge for events of this scale. Since we are involving so many individuals, the logistics of this event need to be planned meticulously.

Another challenge is getting information about this event out to the public. We have so many branches within the LA community, and we want to share this event with as many people as possible. Our marketing team has been working tirelessly to publicize the Los Angeles Gamelan Festival!

Lastly, a number of the support systems we had in place at the end of 2024 are unable to support us in 2025. Firstly, government funding has been cut for the arts in the US. This affects all of the grants and funding we would have received from different universities. And secondly, the Los Angeles Wildfires had a devastating impact on the LA community, and members of our gamelan family in LA lost their homes.

The Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia has been generous in their assistance to produce this festival. Through hard work and perseverance, our team has been able to push through and produce this fantastic event!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
The Los Angeles Gamelan Festival is supported by Burat Wangi and the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia. Burat Wangi Gamelan is a professional Indonesian music and dance group based in Los Angeles. The group was founded in 1972 by Bapak I Nyoman Wenten, Ibu Nanik Wenten, and K.P.H. Notoprojo at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. The Los Angeles Gamelan Festival is held in celebration of the 50th Teaching Anniversary of our founders Bapak I Nyoman Wenten and Ibu Nanik Wenten.
The LAGF Team has been working tirelessly to produce all aspects of the event. Producers and Co-Founders Adam Berg and Matthew Clough-Hunter brought LAGF to life, working together with Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti to coordinate the event. With the help of production coordinator Lizzy Erickson, LAGF’s production team is collaborating with Reason One to fulfill our production needs, including stage, sound, and lighting. Additional sound and production support is provided by Unity Studios LA and producer Adam Berg. Marketing campaigns have been boosted by the support of our marketing team: Shella Berg, Kerri Shak, Arista Nareswari, and Dewa Ayu Dewi Larassanti. A new festival at this level requires a plethora of expertise, LAGF can draw from backgrounds within our diverse team to make this event as successful as possible.
This Festival will bring together Indonesian repertoire and artists that rarely get to meet. Some of us being Indonesian ourselves, we find great value in providing a space for Indonesian gamelans across the states to become a community. And as artists, we recognize the significance of sharing our own cultures, compositions, and choreographies while learning more about Indonesian arts that we ourselves have not been exposed to. From Iowa to California, from North Bali to the South, from traditional to modern, the Los Angeles Gamelan Festival will connect us all.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Perseverance, creativity, problem-solving, and diplomacy have been critical to producing LAGF. The road to throwing a festival often has a lot of bumps. Perseverance is important, as we grapple with not only the lack of government funding for the arts, but also with the aftermath of the Los Angeles wildfires. Creativity is needed in all aspects of planning a festival – from Instagram reels to corporate sponsor proposals; from the layout and vision for the big stage to the tables for our local vendors. Problem-solving is also an important characteristic for our team! We need to be able to jump through hurdles, particularly regarding funding and sponsorships. Finally, diplomacy is a skill we utilize constantly, particularly as we navigate and build relationships with the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia in LA, with local vendors, and with the communities that all of our featured artists are coming from.

Ultimately, our success is built on the hard work of our team! Perseverance, creativity, problem-solving, and diplomacy are qualities that every person on our team has.

Our team is made up of individuals with unique and complementary strengths. Some of us are Music Producers, Educators, Directors, Actors, Engineers, Composers, and Choreographers, or a combination of these backgrounds, and we have needed everyone’s expertise. Without contributions from everyone’s unique backgrounds, we would not be able to produce this Festival.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.buratwangi.com/lagf
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/la.gamelan.festival
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/la.gamelan.festival
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LosAngelesGamelanCollective

Image Credits
All images provided by: Ted Soqui
https://www.tedsoquiphoto.com/