Behind a door in a nondescript hallway in Lincoln Hall, four musicians in stocking feet thread slowly through a maze of antique wood and bronze instruments.

Two sit on rugs and pick up mallets. The others strap on electric guitars. A stream of sound builds as modern guitar melds with a traditional Indonesian musical form known as Gamelan.

This is Twin Court. The Gamelan-rock band – a mix of students, alumni and community members – released their first album, “Forgotten Turns,” on March 1; they will open for jazz-folk artist Sammy Rae and Will Leet at 6 p.m. March 21 in Statler Hall.

“Multiple people in the audience have cried by the end of our last couple shows and have come up to thank us afterward,” said band member Wyatt Westerkamp ’22. “It makes me very emotional to see that our art can do that for people.”

Gamelan refers to both the style of music – which is hundreds of years old – and the large group of mostly bronze percussion instruments it is played on.

“The instruments are incredibly resonant because it’s mostly metal percussion,” said Christopher Miller, senior lecturer in the music department in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and director of the Cornell Gamelan Ensemble. “The timbre is really striking.”

The band started in the spring of 2021 when Jack Neiberg ’24 and Westerkamp, then members of the ensemble, wanted to add new sounds. With encouragement from Miller – and, crucially, his permission to use Cornell’s instruments – they invited other ensemble members to join the experiment.

At its roots, Twin Court is an exploration of how guitars and Gamelan percussion can work together.

“Joining the Cornell Gamelan Ensemble exposed me to new ways of thinking about interlocking rhythms,” Neiberg said. “Gamelan opened my eyes to musical possibilities in a way that felt oddly compatible with the Western background I came in with.”

After graduation, Neiberg moved to New York City, but he plays with the band when he can, along with another former member, Charlie Brush ’24.

“It excites me that there’s a concrete manifestation of a dream we all had four years ago still floating around the world,” Neiberg said.

Twin Court’s current core membership includes: alumni Westerkamp and Caleb Levitt ’24; Gracekelly Fulton ’25, a civil engineering major in Cornell Engineering; Lily Dovciak ’27, a music major (A&S); and Ithaca community members Mandy Gurung and Asher Davis.

Westerkamp said the band’s sound is evolving; songs on their new album lean a bit more into rock than their earliest music, though Gamelan is always a centerpiece.

“A lot of our songs are very meditative,” Westerkamp said, “and the Gamelan instruments themselves just look and sound so beautiful. I think that it’s a cool experience to be able to see and hear them in person.”

Gamelan at Cornell dates back to the 1970s. Cornell’s instruments – a Central Javanese set believed to have been manufactured in the late 1950s – came to the U.S. as an exhibit at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Credit: Sreang Hok/Cornell University

In the Gamelan room in Lincoln Hall, wooden frames that stand approximately a foot high support upside-down bronze pots and bars perched on horizontal ropes; several sizes of gongs hang from a large frame; and two-string fiddles called rebabs lean against the walls. Javanese motifs with curling leaves and snake-like creatures called naga are carved into the wood.

“It’s a rare privilege to access these instruments,” Levitt said. “We’re playing works of art.”

Fulton, a member of both Twin Court and the ensemble, said Gamelan music is soothing, and working with other musicians is rewarding.

“I’m an engineering student,” Fulton said, “and I don’t get a lot of time to just sit with the things that I enjoy outside of what I’m studying, so being in the ensemble has been a really grounding experience.”

There’s a theory among Javanese teachers, Miller said, that learning Gamelan brings out the best in individuals. The music promotes cooperation and can be simple for beginners to learn.

“I think that Gamelan music might be the perfect community music,” Neiberg said. “The music requires more people than a lot of traditional Western music, and because everyone is necessary to make the music, it creates a very nice community atmosphere.”

Back in the rehearsal room, Twin Court member Gurung sat down to learn a new part for the song “Broken Strands.” They’re shifting the arrangement so Fulton can do vocals during live performances.

Gurung nailed the complicated melody on her first try. They paused to celebrate before moving onto another section of the song, patiently working through it.

“This is the nicest band ever,” Gurung said, gesturing with her mallets, “and this is a hard process – the teaching.”

Miller finds the band members’ “collaborative creativity” inspiring. He sometimes sits in with Twin Court and appears on the album.

“It is really one of the high points of my career at Cornell,” he said, “to be working with these students and have them create this thing.”