Amirtha Kidambi, mezzo-soprano, is invested in the performance and promotion of new and innovative music across a diverse array of styles and genres. As a performer, educator, curator and researcher, she strives to draw connections between seemingly disparate musical areas and communities. Whether in new music, experimental rock, jazz or Indian music, Amirtha believes an audience should feel challenged but not alienated. She engages diverse audiences through expression in order to communicate complex musical ideas to a wider range of listeners. As a soloist and ensemble member in projects such as the BACK Voice + Percussion Duo, the early music inspired band Seaven Teares and the Ekmeles contemporary vocal ensemble, Amirtha has performed in a variety of non-traditional venues from DIY spaces to concert halls in Brooklyn and Manhattan including Issue Project Room, Roulette, Zebulon, Death by Audio, Silent Barn, Exapno, Northeast Kingdom, Pianos, The Wild Project and the Baruch Center for the Performing Arts. Amirtha serves on the board for Performers Forum, a monthly series at Exapno that connects performers, composers and music makers of any kind to engage in non-threatening discussion and dialogue. She also acts as an organizer and performer for the Sweat Lodge, the concert series arm of the forum that allows musicians a free range of expression in a casual and inviting atmosphere. In all of her musical activities, Amirtha is deeply committed outreach and is working to create a service organization for musicians who would like to help those in need through musical uplift and education.

Raised in the Bay Area, Amirtha’s musical life was centered on Indian and Hindu traditional music, dance and philosophy. She has been the singer and songwriter in experimental bands, collaborating with visual artist and composer Justin Hopkins in the L.A. based progressive band Sequins and Skeletons. Since moving to Brooklyn in 2009, Amirtha has contributed vocals to the intricate polyphony in Charlie Looker’s renaissance inspired chamber-rock quartet, Seaven Teares. The group’s upcoming full-length album Pow’r Ballads will be released in late-2011. In the BACK Voice + Percussion Duo, Amirtha and percussionist/curator Cory Bracken work closely with an eclectic group of composers, consistently performing outside of the concert hall setting. The duo has pioneered a new direction in vocal writing, expanding the limited repertoire for the unusual pairing by demonstrating its versatility and appeal. Most recently, Amirtha has premiered works by an aesthetically heterogeneous group of composers including Ian Munro, Dave Ruder, Matt Frey, Joe White, Shawn Onsgard and Eric Lyon. She has also been dedicated to the preservation of the modern canon co-curating performances including George Crumb: A Chamber Music Retrospective. Following in the footsteps of Jan Degaetani, she performed two dramatic interpretations of Lorca’s poetry in Night Music I and Madrigals Book I-IV. In Feburary 2011 Amirtha sang the contralto role in a New York premiere of George Aperghis’ hyper-complex opera Sextuor: L’Origine des Especes for the Avant Media Festival.

Amirtha has performed at home and abroad in festivals including the Operafestival di Roma in Italy, the Art Song in Spanish Institute in New York City, the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neuemusik in Germany and the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP) in Boston. She is an avid interpreter of art song and has performed operatic roles such as Drusilla in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Frugola in in Puccini’s Il Tabarro. Upcoming performances include a November premiere of Robert Ashley’s WWW III (Just the Highlights), a production of Ashley’s opera That Morning Thing at The Kitchen, a spring run of Aperghis’ Sextuor and a performance of Luigi Nono’s Quando Stanno Morendowith the Ekmeles ensemble.

Amirtha completed her B.F.A. in Vocal Performance at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in vocal performance at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music. Amirtha has studied classical voice under Karl Snider, Monica Harte, and Lucy Shelton, jazz under Salim Washington, and Carnatic voice under Sandhya Sundaram and Nivedita Shiv Raj. At CUNY Brooklyn College, Amirtha serves as an adjunct professor where she teaches an unconventional introductory course for music majors.