When we speak of music in Israel what are we talking about? How ought we to study it? Reflecting on decades of observation and participation in various aspects of musical life in Israel, Brinner will trace the trajectories of a variety of groups and individuals, and the types of music and musical activities in which they have participated, to sketch the boundaries they have encountered and constructed as well as the connections and bridges they have built within and across those boundaries.

Benjamin Brinner, professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Music, is an ethnomusicologist specializing in Javanese gamelan. He has been playing gamelan since 1977, has studied and conducted research in Java on several occasions, and is the author of Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction (University of Chicago Press, 1995), the textbook Music in Central Java (Oxford University Press, 2007), which includes audio examples recorded under Midiyanto’s direction in Java, and Playing Across a Divide: Israeli-Palestinian Musical Encounters (Oxford University Press, 2009). He is currently completing a book on Javanese musicians’ expert memory for music. 

Free, a Valente Lecture (co-sponsored with Jewish Studies, UC Davis)