Digital Portfolio for Phd Application in Composition
Elder Ones New Monuments (2021-2022)
New Monuments was named in honor of those tearing down statues of slaveholders and colonizers, in hopes of replacing them with new ones. These compositions for harmonium, bass, drums, cello, electronics and vocals, are centered on topics of neocolonialism, the rise of global fascism, violence against Asian Americans, and continuing inequalities 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. Many of these pieces were composed during lockdown in the Global Covid-19 pandemic, while in residence at Pioneer Works in New York City. I took the ferry daily to the venue, to work in isolation in the shipping container recording studio in the venue’s garden. Inspired by cataclysmic events such as the protests in New York City, for which I was regularly organizing musicians in marches, for the City Hall occupation and for weekly concerts outside the federal Metropolitan Detention Center prison in my neighborhood of Sunset Park, I grappled with and the events of the tumultuous period through the compositional process. These pieces are reflections on and reactions to the killing of Asian women in Georgia by a white man, the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and subsequent protests, the Farmer’s Protests in Modi’s neoliberal fascist and Nationalist India (the largest mass protest in the history of the world), and the Capitol Insurrection. As the pandemic laid bare the ravages of the relentless exploitation in our system, the fragility of life, and the mutual entanglements and interconnectedness between us, we also witnessed powerful acts of collective struggle. In some ways, the years of the pandemic provided a pause, filled with the terrifying and yet hopeful feeling that the status quo could no longer hold. The album is dedicated to my late friend jaimie branch, who always spoke truth to power and inspired me to do the same.
Excerpts:
New Monuments (00:00-3:15) p. 15 in score (PDF page number, audio below)
A section: This opening is meant to feel like modern sacred music, with a melody in the voice doubled by cello and a counter melody in the saxophone rising and falling over two perpetually alternating chords in the organ-like harmonium. B section: The infinite alternation of the chords continues (like history repeating itself), with the opening melodies restructured in ⅞ giving way to a saxophone solo.
(4:13-5:54) (7:00-8:40) p. 15-17
C section: The harmony remains, but only in a skeletal form with the synthesizer dropping out of the texture. There is just the voice over the rhythm section, with a new highly syncopated bass line, and intermittent echo by the soprano sax and cello playing duo lines in parallel motion. D: A propulsive polyrhythmic Afrobeat type texture devolves into cacophony, with the ensemble creating an electronic wall of noise (I use the Vocodec effects box developed by Jeff Snyder). This is how it felt when police helicopters descended on us in protests.
Farmer’s Song (Devkar) (00:00-2:00) p. 13
A section: A jangly ensemble, like folk musicians on a train in India play three lines of a raga, with the vocal using sargam syllables. After each line repeats twice in unison, each musician splits to different lines to create polyphony, accenting different notes, before coming back together in unison followed by a harmonium improvisation into a drums/electronics solo.
(4:22-6:15) p. 13 (7:39-8:50) p. 14
B section: This is a dirge, a lament for farmers and all workers. Opening with a mournful melody in the soprano saxophone and answered by the cello, over a plodding funereal hurdy gurdy line in the harmonium, doubled by the bass, followed by a cello solo. C section: In this 6/8 groove with the vocal melody in duple, the ensemble bubbles with spirited polyrhythmic collective energy. The workers are energized by their defiant action of protest. This section continues with a synthesizer and soprano sax duo, which becomes entirely electronic and abstract (dismantling the system).
The Great Lie (00:00-2:15) p. 10
A: In a homage to Bob Ashley, I recite a lengthy text I wrote following the Capitol insurrection in chant-like manner, staying within a strict set of pitches and limited range. This occurs over a slow moving counterpoint in the sax, cello and bass. The pitch set is used and referenced in the following free improvisation.
If time permits:
Third Space (video) (7:13-10:28) p. 7-9
C: In the last part of this piece, I wanted to express and release the fear, rage and despair after the killings of Asian women in Georgia and the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans through the Covid pandemic, a group overlooked in the Black/White racial paradigm. I chose a video version to give a sense of what the ecstatic energy of the band feels like live. Here the 6/8 ostinato gets increasingly complicated, adding a pattern of rising notes until a jagged cycle of 11, 12, 10, 13 and 17, breaking down any coherence or logic until it can no longer hold. It ends in a shivering tremolo texture (the way the piece starts). This is a quartet version, without cello. I’ve also attached the album version below.
Project Description: Described as “aggressive and sublime,” (New York Times) Elder Ones continue to conjure bold improvisations, pushing the boundaries of jazz and electronic forms. Percussion, soprano sax, synths, harmonium, bass, cello, and Kidambi’s astonishing vocals center these compositions on topics of neocolonialism, the rise of global fascism, violence against Asian Americans, of continuing inequalities in the growing shadow of late stage capitalism. Not just a lament, but an explosive call to action, and ode to those struggling for racial and labor justice. Building on the incendiary spiritual and political free jazz compositions on their acclaimed albums Holy Science (2016) and From Untruth (2019) released on Northern Spy, the band’s third album will be released in Fall 2023. Elder Ones features a wealth of talented NYC musicians with Jason Nazary on the drums, Lester St. Louis on cello, Matt Nelson on soprano saxophone and Eva Lawitts on the bass, shared among some of the most innovative bands in creative music including Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl,William Parker’s Sutras Ensemble, Battle Trance, GRID, Metropolis Ensemble, Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, Anteloper, and more.
2. Angels & Demons Songs for the Alter-Destiny (2022)
These compositions for my duo Angels & Demons (Darius Jones and Amirtha Kidambi) are conceptually modern art songs, presented as a six song cycle featuring three compositions by each of us, with Ra’s verse as a focal point intertwined with explosive improvisatory expressions. These selections (my compositions) “The End”, “Light from Other Worlds” and “Touch the Stars”, were 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 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. 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.
Excerpts (video below):
“The End” (53:27-56:37) p. 5 (PDF page number)
One thing Sun Ra and I have in common is our obsession with loops and cycles. This is a device you see in his poetry, where he creates circular logics and phrases that seem without beginning or end. Here he plays with the double meaning of “end” as something finite but unquenchable and infinite as in desire.
This section starts one measure before the B section. I created small loops throughout the piece to create a kind of obsessive descent into madness. In the counterpoint, I tried to play with landing on oddly timed unisons, close intervals, dissonances, and a general feeling of instability without resolution. C section: In the final loop, we play with interlocking asymmetrical patterns that feel off-balance, repeating them while accelerating to a point where they are no longer sustainable.
“Light From Other Worlds” (13:47-18:30) p. 6
This is an emotional piece, where I wanted to capture the dichotomy between Ra’s deep sadness and resolute optimism about unimaginable other worlds far away from the suffering of this one. I centered this piece on the Blues, but one that is fractured, discontinuous, interrupted and sidelined.
The section in the second measure of the third system, at “But a vaster realm”. The sax shadows the vocal line, responding with expressive improvising in the language of the Blues (as interpreted by Jones). I use word painting characteristic of traditional art song repertoire, but in an improvisatory context. After Jones’ heart wrenching improvisation, we take a breath and pick up the pieces, charging ahead into the future, in search of other worlds. The repetition at the end is minimalist, ritualistic and trance inducing, trying to keep it going as long as possible.
If time permits:
“Touch the Stars” (31:30-34:48) p. 3
I was aiming for stillness with starbursts of energy, like the night sky. This piece was the first I wrote of the Sun Ra cycle, dedicated to my friend Ellen who passed in 2019 and was obsessed with the stars and astrology.
Project Description: Longtime collaborators Amirtha Kidambi (voice) and Darius Jones (alto sax) join sonic and compositional forces to materialize "Angels and Demons", musical adaptations of cosmological writings by iconic improviser and bandleader Sun Ra. Singer Amirtha Kidambi contributed in extraordinary fashion to The Oversoul Manual (AUM Fidelity), saxophonist and composer Darius Jones’s all-vocal (but wordless) suite, the fourth installment of his Man’ish Boy Epic, performed by the Elizabeth-Caroline Unit. The duo formed to honor the intellectual, musical, literary and spiritual contribution of Sun Ra, as a great Black composer. Dancing between Ra's prophetic poetic verse, abstract phonemes and syllables, sound, noise, tone, melody and rhythmic interplay, Jones and Kidambi use their unique compositional and improvisatory voices to amplify Ra's thought to contemporary audiences.
3. Lines of Light (2018) “Soul Ascend”
Excerpt
(3:00-9:30) p. 1-3 (PDF page numbers)
Section A-C: Begins with sustained notes and polyphony. Each vocalist has a tetrachord centered around the home note B and can slowly glissando between the notes, and utilize a dissonant “color note” sparingly, eventually improvising in their pitch set. Transitions to Klangfarben Melodie, with timbral variation and articulation, with some sustained pitches leading to a metered five voice polyphonic section.
Project Description: 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. My goal is to regroup the ensemble with different membership, record the existing pieces and begin collaboratively composing new works. Performers left to right; Anais Maviel, Emilie Lesbros, Amirtha Kidambi, Jean Carla Rodea, Charmaine Lee
4. Killing Rage (for bell hooks) for Dither Ensemble
For this piece, I decided to forego traditional notation and create a chart with performance notes, text instructions and an “audio score”, where players referred to midi recordings of their individual parts and learned them by ear to internalize and embody them, using the score as a map through form and arrangement. These decisions gave the process a feeling of true collaboration, making it feel like we had been in a working band together for ages, when in reality we only had two rehearsals. This was my first experiment using this type of score with a new music ensemble. Players who are open to this process will find it gratifying, as I heard from Dither Ensemble who told me it was satisfying to improvise and co-create in a less traditionally hierarchical style. I am interested in refining this methodology, with a variety of different musicians because I believe anyone can improvise, coming from a classical background myself.
Excerpts:
(00:00-2:30) p. 1 (PDF page number)
In the intro and section A the writing is more traditionally the rock idiom. It opens with a slow bassline inspired by Kim Deal of The Pixies, with the guitars improvising in a timbral, noisy Sonic Youth territory. As electric guitarists, I knew we were coming from many of the same reference points, so I wanted to exploit this common ground. Brian Chase in addition to being an incredible free improviser is the drummer of the now legendary rock band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The chart specifies which audio part each musician should internalize by ear for each section.
(4:52-5:50) pp. 2
Section B is sparser and polyrhythmic. Each guitarist is given a general pattern, but with lots of leeway to create interlocking polyrhythms by manipulating them. The patterns I wrote are similar to those found in the West African guitar music, but also something you might hear in a math rock band.
(9:46-12:08) pp. 3
In Section C, I wanted all legato lines, like a polyphonic guitar choir. Lines 1 + 2 are closely related, as are 3 + 4, to create a kind of odd canon. As the lyrics come out, it becomes more improvisatory. The guitarists are instructed to degrade their line until only the ghostly traces remain, in a decompositional process. Note that the guitarist’s very noisy distorted entrance at 10:34 is because of a bad cable, which of course did not give us trouble in soundcheck!
Program Notes: My piece Killing Rage (for bell hooks) was composed for a commission by the new music quartet Dither Ensemble (James Moore, Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, Brendan Randall-Myers), based in New York City. It is a tribute to bell hooks who passed far too early at the age of 69, in December of 2021. A crucial intersectional womanist scholar and pedagogue, hooks has been foundational to my understanding of the frameworks of race, class and gender in the United States, articulating theoretical issues in the practical, everyday, personal and relational. I read her collection of essays Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1996) during the pandemic and the Racial Justice movement in 2020. She writes about the deadly effects of the macro and micro aggressions of white supremacy and patriarchy, on the health and well-being of Black women and POC people. The white hot “killing rage” she refers to is the incendiary anger one feels while operating within the white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy on a daily basis, which unspent or unharnessed turns in on oneself.
It may seem ironic that this piece was written for a white male electric guitar quartet, but for me, this was part of my own processing of racial imposter syndrome as a woman composer-of-color in a sphere where I am severely underrepresented. I had intense insecurity around writing a “new music” piece, studying several existing pieces for electric guitar and guitar quartets, as if I had never interacted with the instrument. In reality, my first instrument was electric guitar, playing rhythm guitar and writing in rock bands from a young age (even if the white guys at my high school were uninterested in playing with me). I channeled these insecurities and traumas into an improvisational chamber art rock piece, trusting my intuition and my own unique expertise, adding improvising rock drummer Brian Chase to the group (who was joining for other pieces on the concert) and performing with them myself. Composing Killing Rage became a kind of meta experience of hooks’ text, and is an example of how my research in critical studies has directly informed and impacted my creative process.
Supplemental
Golden Jubilee (2021) (film score)
Video Password: Devchar
Excerpt: (10:48-12:40)
This is the third film in a an experimental documentary trilogy by Suneil Sanzgiri. I have composed music for all three films, for a variety of instrumentation with different collaborators. This score was written for four performers/improvisers; Angela Morris, Nathaniel Morgan, Booker Stardrum and myself, for voice, harmonium, violin, flute, alto saxophones, tenor saxophone, percussion and electronics. In this excerpt, I composed a theme reminiscent of a chorale, with a motif that indeterminately passes from one instrument to another, sometimes resulting in unison or octave doublings. The motif represents Devchar, the deity of protection for the workers and farmers of Goa. Sanzgiri secured funding in 2021 through Creative Capital to begin work on a feature length documentary which I will score, and will be filmed in India, Portugal and Angola in the summer of 2022. I will begin work on the score in 2023 once editing is completed.
Film Description: What is liberation when so much has already been taken? Who has come for more? "Golden Jubilee", the third film in a series of works about memory, diaspora and decoloniality, takes as its starting point scenes of the filmmaker’s father navigating a virtual rendering of their ancestral home in Goa, India, created using the same technologies of surveillance that mining companies use to map locations for iron ore in the region. A tool for extraction and exploitation becomes a method for preservation. The father, sparked by a memory of an encounter as a child, inhabits the voice of a spirit known locally as Devchar, whose task is to protect the workers, farmers, and the once communal lands of Goa. Protection from what the filmmaker asks? Sanzgiri’s signature blend of 16mm sequences, 3D renders, direct animation, and desktop aesthetics are vividly employed in this lush, and ghostly look at questions of heritage, culture, and the remnants of history.
Amirtha Kidambi & Luke Stewart
Excerpt: (22:00-25:30)
This is a fully improvised set for voice, electronics, bass and amplifier feedback. In this section, we’re playing with beatings, the resonant frequencies of the room, and creating psychoacoustics to psychedelic effect. I use a prototype vocal effects box created by Jeff Snyder, where I can change the parameters of a “Sympathetic Strings” patch, based on Henry Cowell’s experiments with voice and string vibration. I can tune and detune “the strings” and also change their pitch, register, decay, and the position of damper. I use the string resonance against my voice and the bass feedback, but also increase the decay to the point where I can create pure sine tones to tune and detune against.
Project Description: Zenith/Nadir (Tripticks Tapes, July 2022) is an improvised seance, conjuring the spirits of ancestors through urgent frequencies, to excavate the intergenerational trauma which haunts and guides our living present. Recorded in Brooklyn during the tumultuous Summer of 2020, the album reflects extreme contrasts of high and low, in a time where despair and possibility were inextricable. In the underexplored combination of bass and voice, Luke Stewart and Amirtha Kidambi mine maximal possibilities, from pure acoustic intimate interactions, to harsh electronic walls of sound. In various configurations of upright bass, amplifier feedback, effects pedals and looping, the duo explores dichotomies, with a side of pristine acoustic duets and another of visceral noise, where the sonic boundaries between the instruments dissolve and obscure. Kidambi employs a distinct vocal effects pedal, meeting Stewart in his amplifier-centered sonic universe. Combining their unique improvised vocabularies which draw from free jazz, noise, rock, Indian music and Black music, their raw chemistry is apparent in their shape shifting improvisations.