Amirtha Kidambi

MMC Portfolio for Brown University, PhD Application

Notes on the Portfolio:

My creative practice as a composer, performer, improviser, electronic musician and media artist is rooted in critical inquiry, collaboration, collectivity, and embodiment. These selections represent my core values and guiding principles as an artist, and work that I am currently energized by and actively developing through recorded releases, live performances, new commissions and upcoming projects. For a more complete overview of my artistic work, you can refer to my CV and Statement of Purpose.

*The portfolio contains links to scores/charts in a Google Drive Folder along with audio, video, project notes, excerpts with notes and personnel. All hyperlinks are in RED.

1. Neti-Neti

Electroacoustic duo with Matt Evans

Excerpt 1 “Alive in the Belly of a Green Bird” (6:00-13:10) unfolds from a foundation of an ever-changing odd groove as a voice and percussion chant that becomes increasingly abstracted and cathartic through wails, glottal ululations, repetitive yodel patterns, vocal processing with reverb and delays, and sampled synth layers.

Excerpt 2 “Memory in Veil” (3:00-5:40) is a meditative track exploring psychoacoustic and somatic sensations through inner-ear rattling difference tones created by voice delays using feedback gain and eq and low frequency drum feedback from the tom, applying pressure to change the space inside of the drum. We explore a large range of interacting feedback tones with resonant gong and microtonal pure vocal tones, leaning into the buzz, rub and oscillations that are spatialized to recreate the physical sensation of being in the room.

In this duo, I primarily use a VocoDec prototype multieffects vocal pedal, developed by Jeff Snyder (Snyderphonics), a researcher at Princeton University. The pedal has a wide array of patches including reverbs, delays, sympathetic string emulator, harmonizer, vocoder, samplers, loopers, bitcrusher and pitchshifter, and I am able to fine tune specific parameters such filters, high pass/low pass, EQ, delay frequency, reverb size, sound quality/fidelity, feedback gain, pitch/frequency and many others, using the PA, the room and my body, to create a range of feedback. I prefer the hardware for its knobs and tactility in performance, as opposed to software.

Project Notes:

Neti-Neti began after Matt Evans and I developed an intimate friendship based on the process of grieving the loss of loved ones. Our conversations evolved into improvised sessions, which were released as a lo-fi tape in 2022. Since then, our practice has expanded from the personal to the political. We played sets in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade’s overturning and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which claimed the lives of 22 students and teachers, and through multiple live-streamed genocides. Through improvisation, we discovered how our personal grief work could serve as a vessel for communal grief and meditation. Our sets create a space where people can process loss both individually and collectively. Over time our co-created spontaneous compositions have landed somewhere between Vedic chanting, the sculptural palette of delay and drone evoking Eliane Radigue’s electronic elegy to her son, Trilogie De La Mort, and the low-fidelity rhythmic rituals of proto post-rock band This Heat. Neti-Neti creates a sonic landscape where collective grief is transformed into psychoacoustic exploration. Feedback is a deeply somatic sensation that makes absence and memory palpable – a ghost in the machine. For our first studio album, we translated this live experience into full fidelity with producer Nick Zanca, recorded as live takes with meticulous attention to microphone placement and spatialization. At its root, the album Grace In Rot is informed by grief as it grows to an unprecedented, incomprehensible scale and speeds to a rapid-fire pace, filtered through the glass of our phones. The record becomes a vehicle rather than a means to an end, one that allows the listener to process personal loss and global atrocity and cultivate a collective sonic space to reflect, not as passive observers but as active participants. Found in the Sanskrit text the Upanishads, Neti-Neti refers to the ineffable nature of reality meaning, it is not this, it is not that.

2. Elder Ones

Jazz/Creative Music Ensemble

“New Monuments” Score in Google Drive

Excerpts from New Monuments, a suite of compositions released as an album in March 2024 on We Jazz Records. The first is a video collaboration, synced to audio of our studio recording. The second is a live performance around the release of the record, at Constellation in Chicago.

Excerpt 1 “Farmer’s Song” video collaboration directed by Suneil Sanzgiri (16mm film) p. 13 in score - “Farmer's Song” is an ode to the farmers in India, who staged the largest and most sustained labor demonstration in the history of the world, against the neoliberal, capitalist policies of the fascist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. After over a year of daily demonstrations of millions of farmers, they overturned the farm bill laws. It is a call to all the workers of the world to organize around labor justice. The video begins at the end of the drum and modular synthesizer solo into section B of the composition, opening with a soprano saxophone melody over harmonium drone. The voice enters with a mournful dirge-like melody, lamenting the conditions and exploitation of workers “We work from cradle to grave, conditioned like a slave”, leading into an evocative and open cello solo.

Excerpt 2 (1:39:10-1:49:36 in video): “Third Space” p. 5-9 in score - “Third Space” was written in response to the Atlanta spa mass shooting in 2021, where a white man targeted and killed Asian women. That year saw a sharp rise in anti-Asian hate, highlighting the complexity of the Asian experience in the United States and the need for solidarity between Asian, Black Americans and other marginalized groups amidst the Racial Justice movement. Often rendered invisible in the black/white paradigm, the Asian and South Asian experience exists in the contradictions of the myth of the “model minority”, the emasculation of its men, the exoticizing and subjugation of its women through an Orientalist gaze, and the dehumanization of its diaspora through American Imperialist wars. The term “third space” comes from Indian-British theorist Homi Bhabha, a space of identification which opens up in the collision of colonial power and one’s native culture, forming a complex third stream in diaspora and globalization.

Section A emerges from a shivering synthesizer motive, that is layered by bass and cello tremolo, jittering like the shaking of one’s voice just before an eruption of emotion. The section moves from seething restraint and haunting vocal reverb into an explosion of collective improvisation, with dialogic interchange between the voice and saxophone. Section B is a dance rhythm vamp in 6/8 with a rhythmic propulsion that drives the vocal line “Invisible, caught between the light and the darkness, in the shadows” into another improvised space, before a brutal unison cycle of asymmetric patterns that unleashes full rage against the patriarchy.

Composition Notes:

Total Runtime: 45 minutes album version, 75 to 90 minutes in live performance

New Monuments is a four-movement work, created in honor of people’s movements for collective liberation. The title refers to tearing down statues of slaveholders and colonizers, not in an effort to replace them with contemporary messianic figures, but to collectively reimagine them towards building a new future in community with each other. These compositions are centered on topics of anti-colonialism, the rise of global fascism, violence against Asian Americans, and continuing inequity in the growing shadow of late stage capitalism. They are not only a lament, but an explosive call to action, and an ode to those struggling for racial and labor justice around the world. My intention is that the performance of this work can create a communal space of solidarity, activation and transformative energy, which can be channeled into action.

This work is composed for my band Elder Ones, which I have lead since 2014. Rather than writing for instrumentation, I write for individuals, with the understanding that the music will only take shape through playing, improvising, and collaboration. The compositional process is deeply embodied, originating with my voice and improvisation, slowly taking shape as structural forms, which create space for individual expression within a collective energetic ensemble. The musicians chosen for this project have formidable creative practices in their own right, so the music means to draw out those individual creative voices, giving them agency and autonomy within my artistic vision and subverting the hierarchical role of the composer. Some of these frameworks manifest as repeated asymmetric rhythmic cycles or grooves, drone textures for modal improvisation, free improvised spaces with electronics, and solos and duos emerging from ensemble playing. The score functions as a road map, balancing specific notated materials with open forms, text instructions and notes for improvisation. The compositions unfold over repeated performances over a long period, editing, rearranging and deepening the playing relationship to the forms.

Personnel:

Amirtha Kidambi (Compositions, Voice, Harmonium, Synthesizer, Electronics), Lester St. Louis (Cello and Electronics/Bass), Eva Lawitts and Lester St. Louis (Bass and Electronics), Matt Nelson (Soprano Saxophone and Electronics), Alfredo Colon (Tenor Saxophone and Electronics), Jason Nazary (Drums and Modular Synthesizer)

3. Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?)

Film Score

They Bled for This Land Score (full track)

*These illustrate the interaction of the compositions, sound design and visual language.

Video password: Adamastor

Excerpt 1 (3:10-4:57)- Adamastor Rises from the Sea Chart

Excerpt 2 (10:45-15:25) - “Goa Liberation Theme” and “Chorale” *taught orally to the ensemble, where I directed the improvisation

Excerpt 3 (22:57-23:50) - “Two Refusals” Score

Project Notes:

Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?) is a two-channel experimental film exhibited at Brooklyn Museum as an installation from October 2023 to May 2024 and as a theatrical release. The film examines interwoven narratives around the mutual struggle against Portuguese colonialism between India and Africa and the bonds of solidarity that developed between the two continents. This is my fourth film collaboration with director Suneil Sanzgiri, previously scoring a trilogy of short films on the subjects of South Asian diaspora, hybridity, colonialism, protest movements in India, and transnational solidarity. Our partnership was born from a shared interest in activism and artistic production towards decolonization, utilizing experimental idioms and methods in our respective mediums.

Composition Notes:

For this score, I collaborated with sound designer Booker Stardrum, in creating electroacoustic soundscapes, themes, and motifs for this documentary-narrative hybrid. My materials were drawn from a song which the ninety-four year old Goan freedom fighter Sharada Sawaikar sings during an interview with Sanzgiri, telling him that she orally composed the melody and lyrics from her prison cell as a teenager, between brutal beatings by colonial forces. It was important for me to preserve this oral history of struggle by weaving melodic fragments, modes and pitch sets from this freedom song throughout the score, and although it is never directly featured in the film, it acts as the invisible hand guiding and linking the thematic materials. The instrumentation for the score blends traditional folk and acoustic chamber music elements, with electronics and sound design. The score written for voice, electronics, percussion, synthesizers, cello, bass, piano, alto saxophone and harmonium, was realized through improvisation and oral direction in the studio. The manuscripts convey only some of the instrumentation as we added additional tracks and layers during the recording process, with synthesizer doublings, vibraphone and percussion, creating the depth and density of an orchestral score. My intention was to create ghostly electronic doubles for each instrument voice, influenced by the sound worlds of Vangelis and Ravi Shankar’s scores for the films of Satyajit Ray, bringing ancestral traditions and technological innovations in relief and dialogue with each other.

Personnel:

Suneil Sanzgiri (Director, Editor), Amirtha Kidambi (Compositions, Vocals, Harmonium, Electronics, Synthesizers), Booker Stardrum (Sound Design, Percussion, Electronics), Utsav Lal (Piano), Aakash Mittal (Alto Saxophone), Lester St. Louis (Cello), Luke Stewart (Bass)

4. Angels & Demons, Songs for the Alter-Destiny (2023)

Duo for voice and alto saxophone with Darius Jones

Password: Angels&Demons_2023

“Light From Other Worlds” Score p. 6 in PDF (12:39-16:15, 18:00-20:42, 24:35-28:00)

“The End” Score p. 5 in PDF (1:01:53-1:05:49)

Composition Notes:

Total runtime of the song-cycle is approximately 60 mins.

The compositions for the duo Angels & Demons (Darius Jones and Amirtha Kidambi) contain each of our own interpretations of the art song cycle form, with Ra’s verse as a focal point intertwined with explosive improvisatory expressions. The selections given here are my compositions, “The End” and “Light from Other Worlds”, poems that I chose after spending the isolated period of the pandemic with his words, ringing truer than ever in the apocalyptic fervor of the moment and a racial justice reckoning. Ra’s words feel strikingly contemporary and prescient, hitting chords that can provide a potent release. Ra oscillates between disparities, from dark to light, fear to hope, isolation to ecstatic exuberance, utilizing dissonance and consonance, tension and release, homophony and asynchrony, order and chaos. At the same time, my experience as a vocalist with classic art song repertoire such as Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang and tropes such as word painting and dramaturgical considerations also asserted influence on my approach. I was particularly drawn to Ra’s poetic cycles, and chant-like repetition which can also be found in his music. I use short pitch sets rather than linear melodies in various permutations, so that their beginnings and ends become obscured. Through the insistent repetition the words simultaneously grow in their scope and significance and become increasingly absurd and meaningless. 

Project Notes:

Angels & Demons is a collaboration with Darius Jones (alto sax) in musical adaptations of poetry by iconic musician and writer Sun Ra. Formed to honor the intellectual, literary, and spiritual contribution of Sun Ra, as a philosopher and teacher, the duo’s music dances between the prophetic poetic verse, abstract phonemes and syllables, sound, noise, tone, melody and rhythmic interplay of Ra’s written word. We draw parallels between the generativity of our collaboration and that of Sun Ra and Arkestra band-member June Tyson, a powerful vocalist and violinist, in a ritualistic dialogue. Angels & Demons is a joining of two kindred instruments rarely experienced as a duo: the voice and the saxophone. In Jones, I found a creative partner who uplifts virtuosic vocal musicianship within jazz and new music, where the vocalist has historically been a sidelined figure. We are interested in collapsing binaries between the instrumental and vocal and exploding perceptions of what’s possible for either. The duo was presented at The Kitchen (NYC) with lighting design by Nicholas Houfek, costumes by Sunder Ganglani and in conversation with poet and multi-disciplinary artist LaTasha N. Diggs, creating an immersive experience with extensive collaboration between myself, Darius and the lighting designer to create the feeling of journeying through space encountering various planets for alien incantations.

Supplemental: Lines of Light Vocal Ensemble

Vocal Ensemble

*I have chosen to include this supplemental material of my vocal ensemble Lines of Light from 2018. I feel it is an important addendum as I returned to writing for vocal ensemble this year, with new personnel. Vocal ensemble work will be integral to my doctorate, for my research in embodiment and orality.

Lines of Light Score (Excerpt: Part B + C - 6:18-10:15)

Performers left to right: Anais Maviel, Emilie Lesbros, Amirtha Kidambi, Jean Carla Rodea, Charmaine Lee

Project Notes:

I initially assembled the vocal quintet to free improvise after the 2016 election, as women of diverse backgrounds, races, ethnicities, nationalities, identities and immigration status, to sing together and commune in solidarity. The singers chosen for the project have distinct improvising vocal vocabularies, which are given expression in the flexible and open nature of the compositions. The project is distinct in the realm of improvised and free music, where the voice has been marginalized due to its gendering as feminine and an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity. The piece was written in memoriam for a friend's mother and my musical hero Cecil Taylor, who both died in April 2018, and has since been dedicated to my best friend Ellen O’Meara, who died by suicide in 2019. The text, which I have written, is about cycles of birth and death, contemplating the trajectory of the soul or “atman” in the days after a person’s passing, during the process of mourning. The composition contains limited pitch sets, repetition, indeterminate elements and open sections, to allow for flexibility. The music must be deeply embodied, so each singer feels simultaneously grounded and free. Unlike choral music, which seeks to achieve a blend, the distinct timbre, articulation, pronunciation and character of each voice is essential. To me, this is a metaphor for community; a group of diverse individuals unified in a common goal. I planned to continue work with this group in 2020, however, due to the pandemic multiple members were forced to relocate. These year, we developed new work for this ensemble, but the performance was postponed to Spring 2025 due to illness of one of the performers. 2024 personnel: Amirtha Kidambi, isabel crespo pardo, Cleo Reed, Miriam El-Hajli, Shara Lunon