Vital Records

Vital Records is owned by Wayne Vitale, a composer and educator who has long been inspired by the music of Bali.

He has studied and collaborated with many Balinese musicians and ensembles, bringing them together with diverse artists and audiences. His works have been performed by noted gamelan orchestras in Bali, and in the US including the Lightbulb Ensemble, twelve percussionists working at the interface of Balinese and Western music traditions and innovations.  He is a founding member and past director (1992 - 2009) of Gamelan Sekar Jaya, an ensemble of sixty musicians and dancers with a long relationship to the performing arts and culture of Bali.

He has devoted himself to the metallic art of gamelan tuning and restoration, grinding and filing his way throughout the US and Europe to restore Balinese instruments. In August 2019 he hosted a Gamelan Tuning Workshop in Berkeley, CA — the first-ever such workshop in the USA. This event sparked a series of co-authored articles with music theorist William Sethares, including an in-depth analysis of Balinese gamelan tunings in Analytical Approaches to World Music.

In March 2020, his music was featured in TIDES, a tour of the tidelands of SF Bay soon likely to be lost under rising waters, with visual imagery, installation, and live music performances. He also collaborated with several Balinese composers in the series Transmissions, hosted by Insitu Recordings; he later joined the organization’s board of directors.

His work has been supported the Center for Cultural Innovation, the Creative Work Fund (a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund), the Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals, the Gerbode-Hewlett Music Commissioning Award (for Mikrokosma), Meet the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, East Bay Community Foundation, and other funders.