HGOco
COMPANY COMMUNITY COLLABORATION
HGOco is HGO’s broad initiative for connecting the company with the community in which we live. Among HGOco’s many projects, the touring group Opera to Go! performs family friendly works in schools, churches, and community venues. Each year, HGOco also offers student performances (for school groups only) of a popular opera.
MEET THE COMPOSER
Kamala Sankaram IN FEBRUARY, HGOCO and Opera to Go! will present the world premiere of Monkey & Francine in the City of Tigers, a delightful new work for children and families that will tour to school and community venues. Composer Kamala Sankaram answers some questions about the piece from Dennis Arrowsmith, HGOco’s touring programs manager. DENNIS ARROWSMITH: What led you to become a composer? KAMALA SANKARAM: I’ve been writing music for most of my life (opus 1, entitled “Flutter By, Butterfly” and written at age four, still exists on a VHS tape somewhere…) but I never dreamed that it would end up being my career. Coming from a South Asian background, I was expected to become a doctor. And indeed, after doing my undergraduate work in composition, I pursued a doctorate in cognitive psychology. But the need to write and the awareness of musical sounds in the world was always a constant for me. While working on my PhD, I wrote music in my spare time—for bands, for friends’ chamber ensembles, for friends’ plays, and whenever anyone asked me to. Eventually, people I didn’t know 60
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started asking me to write for them, and as that continued, I found myself spending more time on music and less on research. So, I suppose I became a composer because I couldn’t help but become one! What kind of music do you like to listen to and does it influence your compositions? As a child, I heard both classical Carnatic music and classical Western music at home. I think the influence of that early exposure is that I tend to seek inspiration from and to hear connections between very different kinds of music. I’m sort of a musical polyglot—I go through phases of listening intensely to varying composers and musical genres. I have many favorite composers, but lately I’ve been listening to Messiaen, Schnittke, and Reich. I’m a die-hard fan of Pink Floyd and Radiohead. I also love global pop and rock music from the ’60s and ’70s, particularly R. D. Burman, the great Bollywood composer. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Afrobeat, including Francis Bebey and Bob Ohiri. I do think it finds its way into my composition in that I’m often looking for ways to bring together the sounds and rhythms that I love in each of these kinds of music.