Name: ganavya: Daughter of a Temple
Start: 2025-09-20T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Epsilon Spires

Join us in our Sanctuary for a deeply moving sonic experience combining spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional singing, extraordinary vocalist ganavya is joined by acclaimed jazz harpist Charles Overton to perform original pieces alongside transcendant works by Alice Coltrane.
“No matter the language or the content, Ganavya’s voice is a thick ephemera, like smoke as dark as ink, just coming off the fire.” - The New York Times
“[Her] voice had a delicate emotive heft that could turn stoics into sobbing wrecks” – The Guardian
Described by The Wall Street Journal as “among modern music’s most compelling vocalists.” Tamil Nadu-raised and New York-born vocalist ganavya's most recent album Daughter of a Temple brings the Hindu storytelling tradition of harikatha into the 21st century in an innovative and deeply moving blend of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional singing. For this very special night, she'll be joined by acclaimed jazz harpist Charles Overton in performing transcendant original pieces alongside works by Alice Coltrane.
"Vocalist, scholar, and composer Ganavya has carved a niche for herself at the nexus of South Indian vocal styles and contemporary music. Her own debut album, Aikyam: Onnu, ("Harmony: One") features the incredible breadth of her character: it draws from an amalgam of ancient Indian spirituals she learnt during pilgrimages as a child, with an anchor in jazz standards that she has translated to Tamil from English, showcasing a linguistic command over her two mother-tongues." All About Jazz

Close collaborators include Rajna Swaminathan, Shabaka Hutchings, esperanza spalding, and multiple productions as composer and soloist with Peter Sellars. As a writer, ganavya was contributing writer for elder Wayne Shorter’s opera Iphigenia, and her essays are found in John Zorn’s Arcana: Musicians on Music IX.