Suhirdjan gamelans have revolutionised the teaching of gamelan across the UK, enabling the instruments to be made available to hundreds of thousands of children over the years. Many of those children have gone on to grow to love the arts and culture of Indonesia, and travelling across the world to visit the hometown of their gamelan.
Suhirdjan’s passing is a great loss on so many levels, but his legacy will live on around the world for an ever increasing number of people in the musical enjoyment and educational experience of playing a Suhirdjan gamelan.
Sarah Stuchfield
United Kingdom
Nov. 19, 2012
St Aloysius College Children
Australia
Mas Hirdjan will be remembered with great admiration by his family, his
friends and gamelan aficionados in Indonesia and abroad. His great talent and sensitivity, accompanied with genuine humility, will always be an object lesson and something for me to emulate.
Hardja Susilo
Honolulu, Hawaii
Jan 5, 2013
Ki Suhirdjan will always have a very special place in my heart and somehow I feel that a part of him resides with [the gamelan he made for me,] Dewi Sri.
Nancy Cooper
Honolulu, Hawaii
July 18, 2013
Nikhil Dally has told me of the sad news of the passing of Suhirdjan, whom I knew only from Nikhil, as the maker of our pelog gamelan at Atlantic College, in South Wales, UK. I was Director of Music there for many years and through Nikhil’s enthusiasm, I arranged to purchase our gamelan, which has been a wonderful musical asset to the college and its music teaching and performing. It is such a wonderful instrument, and, though now retired, I remember many hours of fun with Nikhil teaching myself and the students, and some marvellous concerts, too. I am so grateful to Suhirdjan for the extraordinary expertise with which he crafted the instrument, and am still amazed at the professionalism and artistry of his creations. His work lives on and continues to enrich people’s lives.
Brian Noyes
briannoyes.co.uk