Gig Description
http://musicnow.mills.edu/concert2.php
INDIA IN THE ENGLISH MUSICAL IMAGINATION, 1897-1947
A special concert to celebrate the launch of Professor Nalini Ghuman’s new book, Resonances of the Raj , newly published by Oxford University Press. Featuring an exciting line-up of leading Bay Area ensembles and soloists and Mills music alumnae in a fascinating program of innovative compositions which 
reveal a rich and complex history of cross-cultural musical exchange between India and Britain during the first half of the twentieth century, including historical recreations and several US premieres.
The Friction Quartet will play the US premiere of John Foulds’ poignant last string quartet movement, Lento Quieto, written in Panjab, India, in 1935.
Schola Cantorum San Francisco with friends and alumnae sing Gustav Holst’s Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda. Under their Artistic Director, Paul Flight, they will be joined by Cheryl Ann Fulton on harp, and Charles Lloyd on tanpura, members of the Friction Quartet, and Esther Lakhani on piano in a performance of To Varuna and Hymn of the Travellers for women’s voices; Hymn to Manas for unaccompanied male chorus with Raymond Martinez, baritone; and the dramatic Hymn To the Unknown God.
Maya Kherani, coloratura soprano, with Elizabeth Gaston on flute and Nalini Ghuman on piano, will perform The Snake Charmer, a poem by Sarojini Naidu set to music by Liza Lehmann.
In a historical recreation of the first All India Radio Indo-European Ensemble created by John Foulds, Sheela Bringi, bansuri, Kash Killion, sarangi, Charles Lloyd, sitar, Farley Pearce, dilruba, Jody Stecher, sursringar,and Sudarshan Siddhaye, tabla, will play music as broadcast from Delhi in the 1930s in the first performance outside India.
Gabriela Solis, contralto, is joined by the Friction Quartet and pianist Esther Lakhani, in Edward Elgar’s little-known treasure, Hail Immemorial Ind!
Madhuvanti Bhide, acclaimed Hindustani vocalist, performs music which the pioneer of Indian music in the West, Maud MacCarthy, sang in London in the 1910s, with tabla and harmonium accompaniment.
Mark Bonney, tenor, will sing Amy Woodforde-Finden’s ‘World Famous’ Kashmiri Song, ‘Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar’.
Countertenor Paul Flight will be joined by pianist Nalini Ghuman in Holst’s haunting solo Vedic Hymn To Varuna.
Pianists Nalini Ghuman and Esther Lakhani will give the US premieres of excerpts from two modernist masterpieces, John Foulds’s Essays in the Modes, and Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum.