Nature was her very first university. And it remains the most important one – even though Rini holds a PhD in composition, has received multiple scholarships, taught widely in the United States, and now lectures at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta, a city in central Java, the world’s most populous island, home to nearly 160 million people.  

Rini is an educator, musician, poet, and above all, a singer – one whose voice resonates through her entire being and presence. “I was born a vocalist,” she says. “When I’m singing, when I play my music, I move my body and dance as part of the performance. This is like one union in the theatrical musical singing style, and it is this union that I use for my art and for my performances everywhere.”

Born in 1983 in a village near Tulungagung in East Java, Rini now primarily resides in Surakarta —when she’s not travelling, that is. During the interview for the Monheim Papers, Rini is sitting in Richmond, Virginia. She has just returned from a stay in Australia, where she performed in Adelaide, followed by a brief stopover in Indonesia. Now, she’s in a room at the University of Richmond, where she’ll soon begin rehearsals with the Kronos Quartet. Together, they’re preparing for a joint performance and the recording of an album featuring her compositions—interpreted by one of the world’s most renowned contemporary music ensembles. “Time doesn’t matter,” she says cheerfully. “I am in the US, but in Indonesian time.” And that’s necessary, as Rini continues to teach her students remotely—guiding them through both the basics and intricacies of karawitan gamelan. 

The concert and recordings in Richmond aren’t her first collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. David Harrington, violinist, founder, and artistic director of the quartet, describes her as “one of those rare people who has lots of sunshine inside her voice”. But Harrington values her instrumental compositions just as highly. In 2020, Rini was invited to contribute a piece to the Kronos Quartet’s 50 for the Future series. The result was Maduswara—a precisely constructed work, rich in harmonic and timbral variety, and opening with a sound reminiscent of geese flying overhead. “I recorded live soundscapes for the piece,” explains Rini. “Frogs, thunder, life in the rainforest. And that is combined with my composition for the Kronos Quartet. That’s how important nature and culture are for me in order to create my new music.” 

Soon after, she began work on another commissioned piece for the Kronos Quartet and New York’s Carnegie Hall: Segara Gunung, which means “mountain sea.” This suite for string quartet explores the powerful forces that constantly threaten Indonesia – volcanic and seismic activity from deep within the Earth, and the rising sea levels.  

A Concert for the Surf

Rini grew up in a family with little in material wealth—but rich in creativity and inspiration. Music ran through several generations; her father is a puppeteer who also supported the family by fishing. She recalls how, as a toddler not yet five years old, she would accompany him on the six-hour walk from their village to Java’s southern coast, where they would fish for several days at a time. Along the way, and later on the beach, her father taught her to sing.  

“There was no electricity on the shore, and we didn’t have any instruments”, she says. “We only had our voices, we only had nature to connect with. So when my father taught me to sing, he was like: ‘Now, please, a presentation in front of the waves! Sing as loud as you can, in front of the waves! This will strengthen your vocals.’ At that time, my voice was very child-like, it was difficult to sing properly, it was more like very, very loud screaming – whaaaa! But that was how my father wanted me to sing: “Yes, sing loud! Sing screaming! And later, when you’re more mature, you can manage the vocals to be softer. But the volume will be kept loud.”” 

This early education was followed, several years later, by formal training as a solo vocalist in Javanese gamelan, known as pesindhèn. Rini also learned to play the rebab, a two-stringed bowed instrument traditionally reserved for the (typically male) leaders of gamelan ensembles.  

Naturally, gamelan comes up again and again in conversation with Rini – as a catch-all term for music from Java, carrying a sense of something all-encompassing, yet also reflecting a tension between past and future. Rini puts it, in a single breath, as though the two were inseparable: “preservation, innovation”. In her view, the two are indeed synonymous. She observes – and passionately laments – that respect for, and the transmission of, tradition are becoming increasingly rare in broader Indonesian society: 
 
“I feel lonely now, as a Javanese in my own land. I feel like I lost, we lost our culture.” 

As pessimistic as that may sound, Rini is not simply looking to the past. She sees herself as a bridge between the old and the new. On her website CV, she describes herself as: „traditional, neotraditional, and experimental”. This isn’t meant as a contradiction, but as a seamless continuity – a single, harmonious whole. Although Rini is often seen as navigating a tension between the traditional and the contemporary – sometimes even within her own family, in light of her father’s expectations for his singing daughter – she addresses this dichotomy openly, especially when presenting her work on the international stage.  

New Music from Java

For a performance at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2024, Rini summed up her complex background in a simple phrase: ‘New Music from Java’. That was the title of the concert in which she was accompanied by Shahzad Ismaily and Andy McGraw, forming a miniature backing band with guitar, synthesizer, zither, stringed instruments, and gamelan. She has been collaborating closely with these two multi-instrumentalists in recent years, expanding the scope of her already wide-ranging work. In 2024, the albums Wulansih and Wani were released in quick succession, created together with Ismaily, McGraw, and members of the band Deerhoof. Only shortly after, in March 2025, an EP titled Rini followed—also a product of this dynamic, collaborative constellation.  

These recordings feel like the beginning of a larger cycle, one capable of branching out in many directions. Elements of Javanese music meet rock instrumentation – or, seen from the other side, structures from avant-garde pop blend with the sounds of “kendang and gong”. On the album Wani, this results in a hyperactive simultaneity – most strikingly in the final track, “Beringin Kurung”: noise rock meets flute jazz and a tremolo rollercoaster. And “Sentrut”, featured on the “Jejak/Steps” EP, fascinates with aria-like soprano peaks, auto-tuned yodelling, and a goosebump-inducing echo in expansive reverb chambers. 

Even on her first solo album “Baramara” (2010), Rini worked in a similar spirit – drawing on methods and elements that reference tradition while also evoking collage and postmodernism. “Baramara” centred on singer-songwriter forms and, once again, that ever-present voice at the core – drawing as much from bel canto as from the Javanese “pesindhèn” repertoire. And above all, she repeatedly broke free from these established forms – with exuberant joy.  

Giving Voice to What’s Been Ignored

In this way, Rini both preserves and renews: She sings – and dances and distils – the forgotten, the repressed, the often ignored. In Indonesia, she is now receiving significant official recognition for this work. She was the first woman commissioned by the court of Prince Mangkunegara X in Central Java to compose a piece. As a result, she was awarded an honorary title by the principality in 2024 – something she mentions almost casually, yet not without pride. 

For her residency in Monheim, Rini is working on a multimedia piece that incorporates her compositions, dance, and puppetry, while exploring the consequences of climate change, which is already affecting the Indonesian islands in particularly severe ways. Her ensemble’s instrumentation – which includes musicians from both Indonesia and the United States – is as diverse as ever, the playing techniques blend both traditional and contemporary styles. Rini herself uses her virtuosity and sensitivity as a singer to build bridges, and as she puts it, to celebrate human culture and raise awareness of our collective responsibility for the planet. “The way I see it, is that we play our human culture. This is our music, this is our art, and we perform it in order to make humans remember that we are still on this earth, and that we are still human. Let us all take care of our human art and human culture.” 

Even more important to Rinie than the word ‘humanity’ is the idea of nature as an all-encompassing organism – and as the deepest source of inspiration for both her music and her way of life. As the conversation draws to a close, she returns to her daily urge to step outside each morning and merge with the total soundscape. “Almost every morning and every dusk, if I don’t have to work on music or am travelling, I just walk, barefoot, and try to connect with nature. I listen to what nature’s ensemble gives me and connect with them to sing and to create. That’s healing for me. Because these sounds make me feel like I am part of nature. I am part of this culture. I am part of my past life. I am part of now. And then we see the future.”