I’m really going to miss cheese!

Given that it’s around 8,000 miles from the UK to Bali it seems remarkable that a ten year old schoolgirl in Devon would fall in love with an ethereal Balinese traditional music. But the young Harriet Riley had a number of advantages – both her parents were music teachers, they lived in bohemian Totnes and her father Lewis Riley taught at the nearby Dartington Hall’s celebrated music college. Dartington was blessed with a full Balinese gamelan orchestra of gongs and bells, one of only four in the UK, and despite her age Harriet was able to sneak into summer schools and, eventually, the weekly gamelan sessions. “I was really committed and came every week” she recalls. “I was like a little sponge – I also did the West African drumming there.”

Ten years ago, having graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, Harriet headed for Bristol and was immediately swept into the music scene. Uniquely skilled as a virtuoso classical percussionist who could also cut the mustard in jazz and world music she soon became one of the busiest musicians in Bristol. Her dazzlingly eclectic roster of regular performing outfits ranged from the existential art pop of Toddler to the contemporary classical of Paraorchestra via Neo-folk duo Sonders, Will Gregory’s Moog Ensemble, the Ethio-jazz of Tezeta, Zoobers’ techno-synth IDM mash-up and many more. These days it’s hard to find a week where she isn’t playing somewhere hereabouts at least twice – unless she’s away on tour, of course.

So you can imagine the shock waves generated when Harriet recently announced she was leaving Bristol and heading to the Indian Ocean with her newly-acquired husband (actually her long-term partner and fellow gamelan enthusiast Christopher Hull). They say their plan is for the pair to immerse themselves in gamelan culture in Bali for a year but might they not just end up swinging in hammocks? She is refreshingly honest: “Definitely some of that! But I’ve got an amazing gender wayang (style of gamelan) teacher and when I’ve been before I’ve had three two-hour lessons a week. Me and Chris play together every day and we ended up doing quite a few ceremonies so I expect we’ll be doing a bit of that. I want to be just writing music all the time and having the sort of space where I can do that whenever. And also improving my Indonesian language. I’d like to do a bit more of other types of gamelan as well, with bigger groups. They rarely have mixed groups but there are all-female groups – traditionally women didn’t play it but there’s some amazing women players coming up now.”

Before she goes, however, Harriet has organised Beat Frequencies, an evening at St George’s (Thursday 25) that showcases the gamelan tradition and also traces the music’s influence into Western music through contemporary composers like Steve Reich and Ann Southam. The concert will have a guest performance from Bristol’s own gamelan ensemble Adnya Suara, directed by Isis Wolflight (“I actually went to primary school with her in Totnes!” Harriet explains. “ And she learnt gamelan in Dartington, too.”) There will also be some of her original music, including a vibraphone duet from Harriet and Chris that she promises “sounds really cool.”

Despite her enthusiasm for the music it was only six years ago that Harriet first visited its homeland: “In 2019 I had this gig in Australia and I thought this is the time to do it: I’ll go to Bali. I went on my own for three weeks before the little tour in Australia. That’s when I met Chris – at this group where I had lessons in various types of gamelan music. I’ve now been four times, but only for a few weeks at a time – freelance life is just hard! – and I have had lessons and even done performances at ceremonies. It’s amazing to be let into those spaces when sacred things are happening. It’s a fascinating window into what’s going on.”

It all sounds like fun, but aren’t there things she will miss about Bristol?: “I’m definitely going to miss playing so many different kinds of music but then hopefully I’ll be able just to make my own music. I’m really going to miss cheese! You can get cheese but it’s not very good and it is very expensive. And I’m going to miss all my friends – especially Stevie (Toddler). We met through music and then lived together during lockdown and she still lives just round the corner from me. She’s hopefully going to visit us in Bali.”

And, most importantly for the Bristol music scene, will she be coming back? “Oh yes – I will definitely be coming back. If there’s a particularly interesting gig I might even sneak back early …”

Beat Frequencies: Balinese Gamelan in Bristol is at St George’s on Thursday September 25.