Crescent is the first solo album from acclaimed composer and performer Kamala Sankaram. Summoning a wide array of timbres and styles, the album traces the impact of human technologies on the natural world, fusing the sounds of steam engines, helicopters, and electromagnetic static with field recordings from across New York State in both composed and improvised settings for voice, percussion, and electronics. The song cycle Crescent is a showcase for Sankaram’s expressive singing and use of extended technique. She is joined by percussionist Brian Shankar Adler, her collaborator in the operatic Bollywood surf ensemble, Bombay Rickey. Adler employs dazzling virtuosity on Sankaram’s compositions for tabla and in extended improvisations using junk metal and plastic. Interspersed throughout are sonifications of temperature data where pitch is associated with the global average temperature on land and sea.
5 Rasas was originally commissioned by Works and Process at the Guggenheim as accompaniment to choreography by Preeti Vasudevan. Taking structure from five different rasas (emotional states in Indian classical art), the piece is built using chance operations and found sounds including field recordings and those weird WW2-era Short Wave radio stations that broadcast nothing but numbers. The string quartet that forms the musical motive for the piece was first composed as a theme for Iphigenia in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Ellen McLaughlin’s Oresteia.
Praised by The Washington Post as “one of the most exciting opera composers in the country”, Kamala Sankaram moves freely between the worlds of experimental music and contemporary opera. She has collaborated with the likes of Anthony Braxton and Meredith Monk and is currently a member of the composition faculties at the Mannes College of Music and SUNY Purchase.
5 Rasas was originally commissioned by Works and Process at the Guggenheim as accompaniment to choreography by Preeti Vasudevan. Taking structure from five different rasas (emotional states in Indian classical art), the piece is built using chance operations and found sounds including field recordings and those weird WW2-era Short Wave radio stations that broadcast nothing but numbers. The string quartet that forms the musical motive for the piece was first composed as a theme for Iphigenia in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Ellen McLaughlin’s Oresteia.
Praised by The Washington Post as “one of the most exciting opera composers in the country”, Kamala Sankaram moves freely between the worlds of experimental music and contemporary opera. She has collaborated with the likes of Anthony Braxton and Meredith Monk and is currently a member of the composition faculties at the Mannes College of Music and SUNY Purchase.
Details
Cat. number: Neuma187
Year: 2024
