Thursday, July 29, 2021

Michael Harrison to Preview Album in Cyberspace

At the beginning of this month, Cantaloupe Music, which is the “house label” for Bang on a Can, released a new album of music by Michael Harrison. Seven Sacred Names is an eight-movement suite, whose final movement recapitulates the opening. Each movement is an original composition inspired by a Classical Indian raga; and each has its own “instrumentation” involving vocal, as well as instrumental, resources.

Michael Harrison and Nitin Mitta playing “Etude in Raga Bhimpalasi” (screen shot from an unlisted YouTube video provided by Drive East by Navatman)

Next month Harrison will present a duo recital of ragas and compositions for piano and tabla. The tabla player will be Nitin Mitta. Harrison will give a performance of his “Etude in Raga Bhimpalasi.” This is the fourth of the “sacred names” in his recording, the name being “Qadr.” Bhimpalasi is an afternoon raga, whose scale is similar to the Dorian mode, thus providing a more familiar point of reference than is encountered in many other ragas. Nevertheless, it involves a slow ten-beat rhythmic cycle in which four-against-five polyrhythms are embedded. The remainder of the program will consist of traditional Indian classical music, which Harrison has adapted for piano with tabla accompaniment.

This concert will be presented by Drive East by Navatman, and it will be performed at the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club in Lower Manhattan. Fortunately, for those of us on the “other coast,” the performance will be live-streamed, after which the video will be available for subsequent viewing for the next 24 hours. Here in San Francisco, the performance will begin streaming at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 12. Tickets may be purchased through a Drive East by Navatman event page. After the ticket purchase has been finalized, instructions for viewing the video will be sent through electronic mail.

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