Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan is an ensemble of eight highly skilled Canadian musicians who perform and record using an assortment of bronze and wooden instruments from Indonesia. Collectively these instruments are known as a gamelan – a traditional instrumental ensemble that plays an important role in the Indonesian culture.
Formed in 1983 and based in Toronto, Evergreen Club is a unique performing ensemble dedicated to the development and expansion of its repertoire through the commissioning of new works from Canadian and International composers, as well as to presenting new interpretations of traditional and contemporary Indonesian pieces.
The contemporary works written for ECCG highlight both gamelan and gamelan-plus: an extended ensemble featuring guest soloists and performers, dancers or auxiliary media including audio, film or video. The resulting repertoire reflects Evergreen's intermingling of cultural sensibilities within a global context.
Evergreen Club’s numerous concert appearances have delighted audiences in Canada, the US, Europe, Japan and Indonesia. Recently, apart from their regular season presentations of new works, collaborations, and workshops, ECCG partnered with the UK based Spindle Ensemble for a series of performances and new recording in 2022. The group was also featured at the Arab World Festival of Montréal 2019 with Ensemble SMCQ, as well as the International Festival Gamelan München 2018 in Munich, Germany.
Evergreen Club has collaborated with film-composer Mychael Danna on three of his soundtracks, including his Oscar winning soundtrack, Life of Pi. The group was also the centrepiece of John Wyre’s Heartbeat Orchestra that toured internationally in the 1990s and 2000s.
In performance, and on ten CD recordings, Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan has presented world premieres by leading composers Katia Makdissi-Warren, Ana Sokolovic, Linda C. Smith, Linda Bouchard, Walter Boudreau, Jon Siddall, John Cage, James Tenney, Gilles Tremblay, Mark Duggan, Lou Harrison, John Wyre among many others.
The "Songs Project" features ECCG with vocalists Jennifer Moore, Suba Sankaran and Maryem Tollar performing arrangements of Indonesian and original songs with gamelan. After multiple performances of the Songs Project live in 2017, Evergreen Club released the material as the vocal album, "Bridge".