On Feburary 8, vocalists Sameer Dublay and Aparna Gurav lead an ensemble of eight Indian classical musicians through Sandeep Bhagwati’s rule-based comprovisation concepts and scores, such as “Lehra Alphabet”, “Alaap for Ashok”, “Cloud Melodies” and “Rives&Dérives IV.” The concert includes several world premiers.
Dhvani Sutras is a unique project that builds on Indian music score concepts developed from 2001 to 2008 through the Rasalila project with Shubha Mudgal, Ashok Ranade, Dhruba Ghosh, Uday Bhawalkar, Aneesh Pradhan, Ganesh Anandan and Ensemble Modern. However, for the Dhvani Sutras iteration, Western-educated musicians are left out of the mix.
March 12, 1pm @ Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
On March 12, Sandeep Bhagwati’s pieces “Rives & Dérives II” for voices and a world premiere of “Rives & Dérives III” for instruments will be performed at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. These animated scores for five groups of singers and/or musicians grew from a postcard score for an open-air port symphony. The scores have now become concert pieces that highlight the transient nature of sound and how it moves through us as we listen.
Feb 12, 5:30 pm @ TARQ Gallery, Dhanraj Mahal, Mumbai, India
POEMS AS SCORES: A Public Conversation with Sandeep Bhagwati
As part of the annual Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, celebrated poet Ranjit Hoskote invites Sandeep Bhagwati to discuss why and how he writes poems as scores, instructions and structure generators for music composition. Sandeep will draw on examples of past and present work, such as his “Native Alien” cycle and “Let This Sound Slowly Dissipate” performance.
Feb 2-6, 3:30 to 9 pm daily @ FLAME Campus, Lavale Village, Pune, India
From February 2 to 6, Sandeep Bhagwati will be participating in five days of lectures and listening sessions at the symposium “Making Harmony: A Non-Colonialist Introduction to Two Millenia of Western Art Music.”
matralab’s Jen Reimer and Max Stein share a fascination with reverberant spaces. Drawing inspiration from the hidden harmonies and secret rhythms present in urban sound environments, they create immersive multichannel sound works for processed horn and field recordings. Their pieces are conceived, composed, performed and recorded in the spaces themselves.
Jen and Max recently released a tape that features two of their performances in resonant, yet very different locations. “Lisboa” was recorded in the former cistern Mãe D’Áqua, an architectural cathedral for water that is known for its sounds. In “Skagaströnd”, Jen and Max take their listeners inside an old chimney in Iceland and slowly reveal its glistening, fulminating wavy sound. Both works make the entanglement of sound and space tangible for those who let themselves glide into the recordings.
You can listen to both performances here and explore the group’s other projects on their website.
