The last time I wrote about Indian music, I described how Indian musicians create melody and improvise on it. Indian music is improvised, both melody and rhythm. For a composer like me, who writes everything, even the smallest detail, abandoning decades of excruciating non-improvising, is a huge step. My goal for the Gayatri Mantra, the song I’m writing […]
I’m currently writing an opera based on Farahad Zama’s great book, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People. The story takes place in Vizag, a city in South India. Of course, the music I’m writing is plain old regular opera, or so I thought until I decided that one of the songs Aruna, the heroine, absolutely […]
Farahad Zama wrote a wonderful book with this title. He has given me permission to base an opera on it. I’ve been working on the script for a year, and now, I’ve started writing the music. Tom Hassing’s writing the libretto. Right now, I’m writing a baritone aria for Ramanujam, the male protagonist. This aria is […]
