Note: This is the first three movements of this set (Act 1), which were commissioned by TENET Vocal Artists. Movements 4 and 5 (along with interludes) have been commissioned by Backshore Artists’ Project and Music from Angel Fire, and will be premiered in August 2025.
Program Notes
I’ve always been fascinated by iconoclastic women — those who somehow saw beyond the societal conventions of their time, and chose to invest in their own, more expansive vision. Mirabai is one such figure. She was a princess living in 16th-century India, who married into a rajput (royal) family. Yet she refused to consummate her own marriage because she believed herself to be in a higher spiritual marriage to Lord Krishna, a Hindu deity. Ultimately, this refusal to carry out her duties as a wife brought so much shame on her family that she was poisoned to death.
The only primary sources we have of Mirabai are her bhajans, the texts of her devotional songs. Most of them express her longing for Krishna, and her acknowledgement that she was perceived as being crazy. And yet, I’ve always wondered: what did a woman in per position need to do to create a buffer from society, so she might have a moment to commune with her own deepest truth? We know she sought that truth persistently — she refused to be cloistered in her palace, and instead followed and learned from revered gurus (often very famous musicians) and sadhus (wandering mendicants) alike, often at great risk. She saw her devotion to Krishna as a path to enlightenment, to knowledge, to intellectual depth. And ultimately, it is her work that has endured long past the opinions of her dissenters.
Courage is contextual. It may look different in different situations, because we can’t always see the vision of those who exercise it, the enormity of the risk that requires it, and the relationship between what stands to be both lost and gained in the process.
This work is the first act of what will be a larger cantata, exploring Mirabai’s ceaseless devotion over the cycle of a day. This first act journeys through a sleepless night, using Hindustani ragas (melodic frameworks) that correspond to evening and late night hours. Practically speaking, it is my first time working in two improvisatory traditions at the same time: early music is perhaps the place where Hindustani music comes the closest to Western classical music, and I love finding the places where these two practices overlap, and where we might actually speak similar and complementary musical languages.
Recording
see video recording above
Text
(forthcoming)
Premiere/Performances
The first three movements of Subah Shaam were premiered by TENET Vocal Artists and Novus on April 20, 2024. The second half of the work will be performed at Music at Angel Fire in the summer of 2025.
