Musician Bios & Program Notes for 10/22 Recital
ABOUT THE MUSICIANS:
Click to learn more about Amy Shook
Click to learn more about Shawn Purcell
Click to learn more about Nabin Shrestha
PROGRAM NOTES:
Chasing Shadows (2011) — arr. Shah/Norman
ANOUSHKA SHANKAR (b. 1981)
Daughter of sitar legend Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar has carved her own unmistakable path—bridging Hindustani tradition, cinematic soundscapes, and global electronica. Chasing Shadows, originally released on her GRAMMY-nominated album Traveller, traces a journey between longing and transcendence. Built on the hypnotic pulse of a tanpura and hand-played tabla groove, the piece evokes the liminal space between dusk and dawn—where rhythm becomes breath and melody becomes memory. This arrangement expands the work’s textural depth through bansuri, bass, guitar, and saxophone, bringing a Western Jazz hue to Shankar’s intimate dialogue between East and West.
Cyprus (2015)
JONATHAN EPLEY (b. 1984)
Guitarist and composer Jonathan Epley’s Cyprus reflects on the island’s role as a crossroads—where Europe meets Asia, and antiquity meets the present; a place shaped as much by conflict as by calm. The piece opens with strong rhythmic layers that evoke wind over stone and waves breaking against forgotten ruins. From this textured landscape, a lyrical theme emerges—rising gently out of turbulence, then ebbing back into the pulse that first gave it life.
Modal improvisations on guitar and saxophone intertwine with subtle rhythmic cycles inspired by Hindustani tala, creating an impressionistic soundscape where cultures merge rather than collide. In the hands of the Temporal Taal Collective, Cyprus becomes a living metaphor for coexistence—music that listens as deeply as it speaks, charting a geography shaped by empathy, curiosity, and quiet renewal.
Lullaby (from Life of Pi) (2005) — arr. Shah/Norman
MYCHAEL DANNA (b. 1958)
This haunting lullaby, first heard in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, was composed by Mychael Danna with lyrics by Carnatic vocalist Bombay Jayashri, who also sings the original. In the film, it appears as a tender invocation, opening the story with the atmosphere of calm and safety rather than lull into sleep.
Jayashri’s lyrics—initially in Tamil—pose a series of poetic questions:
“Are you the peacock, or its plumage? / Are you the cuckoo, or its cry? / Are you the moon, or the light of the moon? …”
Notably, the song was later at the center of a controversy: descendants of the 19th-century Malayalam composer Irayimman Thampi claimed that the first eight lines were a translation or adaptation of his celebrated lullaby Omanathinkal Kidavo. That lullaby, composed in 1813 for the birth of Swathi Thirunal of Travancore, remains deeply embedded in Kerala’s cultural memory. Thampi’s version was originally set in the Kurinji raga (though often performed in Navaroj or Nilambari) and to Adi talam.
Jayashri denied the allegations, asserting that her words and melody came from her own inspiration. Danna also defended the originality of the work, noting he co-created the piece alongside Jayashri and that similar images naturally arise in many lullabies.
Sonata in राग जोग (Raag Jog) (2023)
DREW ZAREMBA (b. 1991)
(from original orchestral version, adaptation of Nightfall Rhapsody)
Commissioned by saxophonist Anjan Shah, Sonata in Raag Jog was conceived as a bridge between Shah’s Indian heritage and his Western musical training. Adapted from Zaremba’s large-scale orchestral work Nightfall Rhapsody, this quartet version—scored for bansuri/sax, tabla, guitar, and bass—invites listeners into an intimate sound world where raga and jazz, composition and improvisation, tradition and personal rediscovery coexist in a single breath.
For Shah, the work represents a deeply personal journey of reconnection. Following the passing of his father, whose early life in India had been steeped in Kathak dance and classical music, Shah began studying the bansuri flute and exploring the devotional and improvisatory practices of Hindustani music. Sonata in Raag Jog grew from that exploration—a commission meant to express both grief and gratitude, and to reconcile the musical languages that shaped him.
Zaremba frames the piece in a hybrid form, drawing parallels between Western sonata structure and the Hindustani raga arc:
Alap (Exposition): Like the sonata’s opening statement, the bansuri introduces Raag Jog unmetered and free, establishing mood and tonal identity rather than harmony. Themes emerge as fragments—melodic cells that will return transformed.
Peshkar (Development): The tabla awakens the rhythmic pulse, analogous to the Western development section. Motifs are stretched, fragmented, and reharmonized as the guitar and bass weave polyrhythmic interplay.
Paran (Virtuosic Episode): This section functions like the sonata’s climactic tension—rapid, ornamental, and percussive. Tabla, sax and guitar exchange improvised rhythmic episodes, expanding intensity.
Panjabi (Recapitulation in motion): A jazz-inflected groove emerges. Here the main themes return, reshaped through Western phrasing, with bass and tabla aligning rhythmic cycles that echo both swing and tala.
Sawal-Jawab (Coda and Dialogue): Literally “question and answer,” this closing dialogue parallels the sonata’s coda—bringing all voices into conversation, reflecting unity through call-and-response.
Through this structure, Zaremba doesn’t simply juxtapose musical systems; he demonstrates their shared logic: exposition and exploration, tension and release, chaos resolving into clarity.
Raag Jog—meaning “state of union” or “state of enchantment”—serves as both the work’s tonal center and its emotional metaphor. Its characteristic blue-note inflections blur the line between Indian modality and jazz harmony, creating music that feels timeless yet new.
In Hindustani music, a tihai is a rhythmic cadence that repeats a pattern three times to land precisely on the sam—the first beat of the rhythmic cycle. It’s the rhythmic equivalent of a perfect cadence in Western harmony: both satisfying and inevitable.
In Nightfall Rhapsody—and preserved here in Sonata in Raag Jog—Zaremba transforms the tihai into a countdown pattern, a bold rhythmic architecture that unfolds as:
7 – Ta ka di mi Ta ki ta
6 – Ta ki ta dhi ki ta
5 – Ta ka Ta ki ta
4 – Ta ka di mi
3 – Ta ki ta
2 – Ta ka
1 – Ta
This descending sequence begins in seven and ends in one—a symbolic journey from multiplicity toward singularity.
In Hindu philosophy, the number seven embodies wholeness and harmony: seven chakras, seven sacred rivers, seven colors of the rainbow, seven heavens. The tihai’s countdown becomes not only a rhythmic resolution but also a spiritual one—a meditation on returning to unity after diversity.
Musically, this tihai achieves four remarkable things:
Complexity meets simplicity – intricate rhythmic design resolving into perfect alignment.
Mathematical precision – every sub-cycle lands exactly on the sam.
Cultural resonance – the symbolism of seven deepens the music’s metaphoric journey.
Expressive universality – the rhythmic cadence functions as both mantra and groove.
As the piece nears its end, each instrument joins the tihai in succession—the tabla articulating the pattern, the sax and guitar echoing fragments, and finally the bass grounding the last unison strike on the sam (big beat 1). The result is both explosive and transcendent: a moment where mathematics, emotion, and spirit converge.
Caravan (1936) — arr. Shrestha/Shook
JUAN TIZOL (1900–1984)
Few jazz standards have traveled as far as Caravan. Written by Puerto Rican trombonist Juan Tizol for Duke Ellington’s Orchestra, the piece’s exotic harmonic colors and percussive drive embodied the early 20th-century fascination with the “other”—a musical desert imagined from Harlem. In this re-envisioned arrangement by Nabin Shrestha (tabla) and Amy Shook (bass), Caravan takes a full circle journey eastward, infused with Indian rhythmic cycles and modal improvisation. The familiar swing groove modulates between a Panchadasi Tala (15-beat cycle) and a Teental (16-beat cycle), creating a rhythmic engine that is both grounded and airborne—a caravan crossing continents, carried by sound.