Join us for an evening of music featuring rhythms and styles from a variety of classical and devotional genres by the UChicago South Asian Music Ensemble, as well as special guest performers. 

Watch the performance live on Zoom, Facebook, or YouTube. 

This program is free and open to the public. 

Program Description

This year’s program is somewhat diffuse and experimental in scope in relation to those of previous years. The collaborations include bringing to life an early twentieth-century ballet by a Bombay-based Sufi guide and musician that first premiered in Russia, treating the affective expanse of an iconic jazz ballad as a vilambit (slow) movement preceding a drut lay gat (fast movement instrumental composition), and choreographing a group dance to a khayal-inspired number from a recently produced Indian web series on Amazon Prime. Perhaps the most à la carte element of our program is a song (Manidham Malarattum, aka. “Peace Song”) that was specifically commissioned for this occasion and as an entreating meditation on the COVID-19 pandemic, racist violence, and other terrorizing forces confronting us today. Interspersing these collaborations are devotional numbers in various languages speaking to the bhakti, sufi, and vaishnav traditions as well as a couple of more playful numbers.

Guest Performers

Noopura Dance Academy
Directed by: Maha Vardhan
Shreya Rajesh | Thanya Sriselvakumar | Shrieya Praveen | Medha Modekurti | Lakshmi Dev | Sadhana Shree Anbazhagan

Jazz Quartet
Varshini Narayanan (bansuri) | Jonah Francese (trumpet) | Jean-Christophe Leroy (congas, misc. Percussion) | Jacob Secor (saxophone)

String Quintet
Chloe Lindman (violin) | Emily Williams (violin) | Sophia Uddin (viola) | Andrew Molina (cello) | Clara Mikhail (contrabass)

Presented by the International House Global Voices Performing Arts Series, the South Asian Music Ensemble, and the UChicago Department of Music.