King’s College Chapel hosts a mass with a difference

One of the most remarkable masses ever to be performed, merging the exuberant sounds of Indonesian percussion with classical choral vocals, will take place this Friday in King's College Chapel. The event is part of the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas. The soaring nave of the chapel - famous for its stained glass windows and boy's choir - will echo with the sounds of two Javanese gamelan orchestras, playing alongside 50 voices, for the performance of a daring piece of contemporary music that breaks conventions and mixes cultures from across the world. Missa Gongso (bronze mass) is an ambitious composition by Neil Sorrell, a leading enthnomusicologist and Cambridge alumnus. The mass will bring together gamelan orchestras and choirs from Cambridge and York, King's College music students, and young instrumentalists from two Cambridgeshire comprehensives. Sorrell is one of the country's authorities on gamelan - an Indonesian musical ensemble. His setting for Missa Gongso follows the traditional five sections of the Christian mass but interprets the accompanying music in an entirely novel way.