Holy Cross Professor Kicks off Music Worcester with the National Premiere of His Concerto

WORCESTER, Mass. – Celebrated composer Shirish Korde, professor and chair of the music department at the College of the Holy Cross, kicks off Music Worcester’ s 148th season with the U.S. premiere of his composition, Svara-Yantra, on Wed., Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. in Mechanics Hall.  For more information or to purchase tickets, which range from $43 - $46 for adults and $20 for students, visit Music Worcester.

The Boston Philharmonic, one of the finest orchestras in the nation, will bring Korde’s concerto to life. Under the leadership of the dynamic Benjamin Zander, the Boston Philharmonic will feature award-winning violinist Joanna Kurkowicz, praised in Gramophone magazine for her “disciplined virtuosity,” and world renowned tabla (Indian drums) master Samir Chatterjee. The doors open at 7 p.m. for Zander’s renowned pre-concert talk.

Svara-Yantra was premiered in Poland, by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 2005. A reviewer called the composition, “a haunting work, richly imbued with Indian colors and musical tradition, which offers something unique and powerful with all manner of exotic and imaginative texture and color from both soloist and orchestra.”

Over the past year, Svara-Yantra has been performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Wellington at the Asia Pacific Festival in New Zealand, and the Koszalin Philharmonic in Poland. This work was recently released on the Chandos label as an mp3 and on CD through Amazon.com and Neuma.com.

Korde’s other recent compositions include Blue Topeng, co-commissioned by the FleetBoston Celebrity Series and Boston Musica Viva, which features the Balinese artist Desak Made Suarti Laksmi and Bethany Collier. They perform on specially designed Balinese gamelan instruments in combination with the soloists of the Boston Musica Viva. In the fall of 2004, several of his works were featured at the Exchange Festival of contemporary music at the House of World Cultures in Berlin featuring The Ensemble Modern. A song cycle based on the life of Phoolan Devi, India’s Bandit Queen, which combines the classical traditions of North and South India with contemporary musical techniques, was premiered by Da Capo Chamber Players at New York’s Merkin Hall in June 2006.

Korde has composed five large-scale music/theatre works including Chitra and Rasa, which weave the ancient traditions of South and South East Asia into complex multihued frameworks. Rasa was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts opera grant and was premiered in 1999 by the Da Capo Chamber Players and the New York Virtuoso Singers at the Sonic Boom Festival at the Miller Theatre in New York. His most recent opera/dance drama, Chitra, commissioned by the Boston Musica Viva was presented by the FleetBoston Celebrity Series in the spring of 2003 at the Tsai Performance Center in Boston.

In May 2008, the Boston Musica Viva will give the world premiere of Korde’s Songs of Ecstasy, based on mystical texts from Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi, and Christian tradition, at the Tsai Performance Center at Boston University. The Da Capo Chamber Players of New York will play Korde’s commissioned work, Blue Topeng 2, for chamber ensemble and Balinese gamelan soloists in a series of concerts in the spring of 2008 in New York.

A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1976, Korde is a composer of Indian descent who spent his early years in East Africa, and moved to the U.S. in 1965, already well versed in the traditions of Indian and African music. He earned his B.A. at Berklee College of Music, his M.M at the New England Conservatory, and studied advanced Ethnomusicology at Brown University. His grants and awards include: The National Flute Association, Composer’s Inc., The Fuller Foundation, The Lef Foundation, The Fromm Foundation, The Massachusetts Council for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, The Mellon Foundation, The Artists Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Saint Botolph Club Foundation Award, and most recently a Mass Cultural Council Fellow. His works are recorded on Spectrum, Centaur, and Neuma.