Vital Records is a recording label specializing in the music of Bali, Indonesia. Created in 1996, Vital Records is devoted to producing the highest quality digital recordings of a variety of Balinese gamelan ensembles. The highest standards are used in every recording project, from extended planning and discussion with the musicians, to careful choice of pieces and recording location, to extensively researched documentation, to first-class post-production.
The documentation included with all Vital Records CDs is based on interviews with the musicians, primary research in the field, and secondary sources. Through more than two decades of research and experience by the author (owner Wayne Vitale) in conveying Balinese music to audiences worldwide, the booklets created for these CDs are informative, well researched, and easy to read.
In fact, the recordings and accompanying texts can be used as a mini-course in contemporary Balinese music-documents, in the best sense of the word, of one of the world’s most vibrant, and still evolving, musical traditions.
Wayne Vitale has achieved international fame as a composer, performer, scholar, author, teacher, recording engineer, and instrument conservator in the field of Balinese gamelan music.
He is the director of Gamelan Sekar Jaya , a fifty-member California-based ensemble widely regarded as the finest Balinese gamelan outside of Bali. Under his direction, the group has achieved an unparalleled world-wide reputation for its cross-cultural and collaborative work. In 2000 Sekar Jaya was the recipient of the Dharma Kusuma, Bali’s highest award for artistic achievement, never before given to a foreign group. In recent years, the group has performed in venues ranging from Bali’s Festival of the Arts to Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Recently the group undertook an East Coast tour to perform Kali Yuga The Age of Chaos, a dance drama with music collaboratively composed by Vitale and Balinese composer I Made Arnawa.
As a composer and performer, Vitale has created numerous works for Balinese gamelan orchestra, played both by Sekar Jaya and several of the finest gamelan ensembles in Bali. His work has been supported by grants from Arts International, the Lutz Foundation, the Rockefeller Multi Arts Production Fund, and Meet The Composer. These compositions have become known throughout Bali through live performances, extensive coverage by national television and radio, and releases by all three Balinese recording labels; and have directly impacted the evolution of modern Balinese kebyar music.
His recording label, Vital Records (vitalrecords.ws), has released critically acclaimed CDs of Balinese music. He has taught Balinese gamelan music San Francisco State University, Pomona College, and Portland State University. He has also devoted himself to the metallic art of gamelan tuning—one of the few non-Balinese with widely acknowledged mastery in this field—and frequently travels throughout the United States and Europe to tune and restore Balinese instruments.