THE RESONANCE BETWEEN
Presidio Theatre presents
THE RESONANCE BETWEEN
-World Premiere-
San Francisco, CA
Oct 13 - 14, 2023
Presidio Theatre
Welcome
Thank you all for coming tonight, we are deeply honored and happy to share this music with you all. It means so much to us.
Our hope is that throughout the course of this performance the music will speak to your individual and unique journey. We have composed the music for each to discover this, however that may manifest.
We’d also like to acknowledge that in these troubling times that are going on in the world, let us for tonight feel the resonance between each of us in this room. A resonance that is greater than colors and creeds and is connected to the cosmos. We are all one, under one sky. Let us send that energy out into the world.
With love,
Alam Khan, Arjun K. Verma, Del Sol Quartet, and Nilan Chaudhuri
Composers
Alam Khan, Lead Composer
Arjun K. Verma, Composer
Jack Perla, Composer
Performers
Alam Khan, Sarod
Arjun K. Verma, Sitar
Del Sol Quartet
(Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Violin; Benjamin Kreith, Violin; Charlton Lee, Viola; and Kathryn Bates, cello)
Nilan Chaudhuri, Tabla
Special Thanks
This project was made possible by a generous grant from the Creative Work Fund of the Haas Foundation, with support from the Hewlett Foundation. This event was also sponsored in part by a grant from Grants for the Arts.
We’d like to thank Presidio Theatre for hosting this premiere, and for all the hard work from the Presidio staff and
technical team to make this possible.
Program
The performance will be approximately one hour fifteen minutes long, with no intermission.
In the Indian tradition, audiences are welcome to audibly express appreciation during the performance!
Chapter 1: Awaken
Chapter 2: Embark
Chapter 3: Soliloquy
Chapter 4: The Passage
Chapter 5: Messenger
Chapter 6: Two Worlds
Chapter 7: Rebirth
Chapter 8: Open Eyes
Chapter 9: Ascent
Chapter 10: The Moon and The Mountain
Project Background
In this world premiere performance celebrating the album by the same name, “The Resonance Between” invites you on a musical journey exploring what it means to belong to more than one culture and to find one's identity between and beyond them.
An ambitious work 6 years in the making, Internationally-acclaimed artists Alam Khan, Arjun K. Verma, and Jack Perla blend Indian classical and European Classical music, artfully uniting Indian raga (melody) with western harmony in a groundbreaking collaboration. Featuring the critically-acclaimed Del Sol String Quartet and some of the finest young tabla drummers in the world: Ojas Adhiya, Ishaan Ghosh, and Nilan Chaudhuri.
As multi-ethnic composers, Alam and Arjun express their lifelong search for identity within and across their Indian and Euro-American heritages, in collaboration with cross-cultural composer Jack Perla.
Through richly textured and intricately layered music, “The Resonance Between” takes audiences on a journey illuminating the threads of human emotions which ultimately transcend race and culture, linking us all together between our separate worlds. This journey comprises various musical chapters representing distinct stages in the composers’ own search for cultural and personal identity.
Despite the many aesthetic similarities between them, Indian classical and European classical music are only rarely combined, and often in a manner that amounts to mere juxtaposition rather than integration. “The Resonance Between” represents a groundbreaking new level of collaboration between these genres from east and west, synergistically fusing them into a unique work that is truly more than the sum of its parts. “The Resonance Between” represents one of the first-ever musical works composed for sarode, sitar, violins, viola, cello, and tabla, and stretches all seven instruments to achieve a rich, elegant, and integrated sound.
“The Resonance Between” is also a continuation and an advancement of the rich tradition of Indian classical music in the modern world. Alam Khan is the grandson of Allauddin Khan, the preeminent musical legend who trained both Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar, the 20th century ambassadors of Indian classical music to the world, who became famous not only for their astonishing classical playing, but also for their trailblazing east-west collaborations. This esteemed lineage sets a precedent both for the traditional rigor and the creative innovation of “The Resonance Between”.
Alam's father, Sarodist Ali Akbar Khan, widely considered the "J.S. Bach" of Indian classical music, brought this music to the world in the 20th century, along with Alam’s uncle, Sitarist Ravi Shankar. Now Alam, a world-renowned sarode player himself, continues the tradition in a new way with a modern collaboration with string quartet, tabla, sarod and sitar: The Resonance Between.
Sitarist Arjun K. Verma was first trained by his father, Roop Verma, in the style of Ravi Shankar sitar playing. Arjun continued with advanced training under Ali Akbar Khan for many years, integrating the tonal and melodic richness of Ali Akbar Khan's sarode style with the techniques of Ravi Shankar's sitar playing.
In the end, no matter our ethnic and cultural backgrounds, we are all connected by the range of human emotions we experience, and the resonance of those emotions between us. This is the thread that ties us together and shapes our identity – The Resonance Between.
Bios
Technical team and Theatre staff
PattyAnn Farrell - Production Manager
Alessandra Waste - Assistant Production Manager
Chris Kenney - Technical Director
Ben Krames - Audio Head Engineer
Andrea Schwartz - Lighting Head
Jason Woodward - Stagehand Head
Daniel Rodriguez - Camera Op
Neil Godbole - Recording and consulting sound engineer
Nazan Aktas - Stage Manager
Thank you all for coming!
Please follow the artists on social media and their respective email lists to find out about new projects!