“3AM” is the newest single from her
upcoming new album: Nodding Terms
Featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Hugh Brunt

As a preview to her forthcoming album project that challenges the conventions of the definition of classical music, Nodding Terms, the Los Angeles-based composer and producer Shruti Kumar announces the release of the record’s third single on April 22, 2022. Titled “3AM”, the single is poised for major streaming platforms worldwide, including Apple Music/iTunes and Spotify. The full album boasts a top-tier, all-women technical team, self-produced by Kumar, engineered by Fiona Cruikshank (Dot Allison, Marc Shaiman, Jacob Collier), mixed by Eva Reistad (Hans Zimmer, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus), and mastered by Heba Kadry (Björk, Big Thief, Animal Collective, Beach House, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Garbage, Japanese Breakfast).

The album’s first two singles already released are: “SALT” (feat. London Contemporary Orchestra) and “LAST CALL” (feat. Shungudzo) and are available now, streaming on all digital platforms. The next two tracks from the album “3AM” (feat. London Contemporary Orchestra) and “WHAT’S AT PLAY” (feat. Def Sound) will be released on April 22 and May 6 respectively. The full album will contain 10 tracks and is projected for a July release.

The album Nodding Terms is sewn together featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra and multiple featured artists — all the orchestral/electronic tracks have a counterpart rework featuring an artist, actively mixing and almost employing traveling through genre as a narrative tool. The title “Nodding Terms” itself is from a quote from the late Joan Didion: 

“ …I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise, they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

Says Kumar: “[Didion’s quote] embodies my relationship to all my musical selves as someone who started off very classical and departed to pop, hip hop, electronic, scoring, and have somehow found myself back in the concert world but with all of these added sensibilities I used to hide for so long while trying to fit into each genre I ‘tried on’.”

The London Contemporary Orchestra is the thread throughout the record, and each bigger orchestral/electronic track has a partner rework that features an artist — all featured artists across multiple genres Kumar worked in throughout her career. In addition to Shungudzo and Def Sound, Kumar presents tracks with Seema Hari, Lara Somogyi, Michelle Ross, Hainbach, Nadia Sirota, and others. Remixes are also in the pipeline from Bad Snacks, Kate Simko, Kim Anh, and Sandunes. 

For more about the artist, please visit shrutikumar.com

Pianist Jenny Q Chai has released a thrilling new album of music by Bach, Ives, and Schumann on the Divine Art Recordings Group label. Available now as both a physical CD and in digital format, Songs of Love presents Schumann’s legendary Kreisleriana alongside two movements by Bach and Ives as Jenny’s tribute to her esteemed first teacher at the Curtis Institute, the late Seymour Lipkin who she calls ‘my music grandpa’. The album can be acquired through major music retailers, and through the Divine Art label directly: divineartrecords.com

Known for performing and recording new music, Jenny Q Chai also proves herself a superior interpreter of classic works for piano in this album, her first featuring compositions of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

Features:
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Aria from the ‘Goldberg’ Variations, BWV 988
Charles Ives (1874-1954): ‘The Alcotts’ from Piano Sonata No. 2 (the ‘Concord’)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Kreisleriana, Op.16

Jenny has a special connection with Robert Schumann, whose work she learned from Lipkin, with whom she studied from the ages of 12 to 19. She has a special love for Kreisleriana which she says never grows old but ’ lives inside of you’. Hence the title, “Songs of Love”.

Lipkin, also a great Beethoven interpreter, “was known as a very tough teacher, but he was always sweet to me,” says Chai. “I wanted to evoke Mr. Lipkin and Beethoven — without actually recording Beethoven.” Charles Ives quotes the famous beginning of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in “The Alcotts” from the “Concord” Sonata, the second selection on this album. Published in 1921, the work is an enduring invention of this original and idiosyncratic composer.

“Everything comes from Bach,” according to Jenny Q Chai, so it is fitting that the Aria to his “Goldberg Variations” should begin this album. Robert Schumann found Bach to be “an inexhaustible source of ideas,” and even after thirty variations, the aria doesn’t seem at all exhausted and, as it is reprised at the end of the piece, it is as fresh as it was at the beginning.

The musician and conductor Johannes Kreisler was the creation of the extraordinary imagination of the author, composer, conductor, and music critic E. T. A. Hoffmann, one of the initiators of the Romantic movement in German literature and music. Hoffmann’s novel, in which Kreisler appears, purportedly has two authors — one is a cat, who pours out his life story, while the other is the narrator who recounts the remarkable tale of Kreisler.

Kreisler captivated the imagination of Robert Schumann and was the inspiration for his eight-movement fantasy cycle: Kreisleriana. Perhaps the novel with two authors appealed to Schumann, who sometimes attributed his writings to “Florestan the wild,” and at other times to “Eusebius the mild.”

Written in just a few days in April 1838, Kreisleriana is one of the great pieces of the Romantic era. Schumann’s contemplative lyricism and passionate spontaneity combine to express both the intriguing personality of Kreisler and of Schumann himself.

A champion and noted interpreter of 20th century and contemporary works as well as core repertoire, Jenny Q Chai also works to develop new interactive music score software and teaching in China and the USA. She both founded and manages the Face Art Institute of Music, a Shanghai-based music school devoted to bringing Western music education to China, and has served on the board of Ear to Mind, the contemporary music organization in New York. She is currently based both in Shanghai and in California where she is a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley.

The New Yorker described Jenny as “a pianist whose dazzling facility is matched by her deep musicality”. On top of all that she also projects a modern and liberated self image.

For more about the artist and the album, please visit:
jennychai.com, faceart.info, and divineartrecords.com

Part of the 40th annual Pride Bands Alliance Conference

Hosted by Denali Foxx and Angeria Paris VanMicheals
(of RuPAUL’S Drag Race fame)
Featuring world premieres by composers
Christen Taylor Holmes and Evan Williams

On Sunday, May 29 at 7pm, Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre will host the culmination of the 40th annual Pride Bands Alliance conference. Chicago’s Lakeside Pride is welcoming Pride Bands Alliance members from its family of 38 affiliate bands spread across the United States, Australia, the UK, and Canada to return to Sweet Home Chicago where the organization started 40 years ago!

Held in a different city each year, here’s what makes this year’s celebration so special:

• World premiere compositions Griffin by young composers Christen Taylor Holmes and Love Words by Evan Williams
• Celebrity hosts, both contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race: Denali Foxx and Angeria Paris VanMicheals, will emcee and appear in a special performance and an exclusive VIP Meet & Greet
• Two ensembles conducted by four conductors
• 40th anniversary celebration showcasing diversity in the LGBTQ spectrum

General Admission tickets are available at an early bird price of $18.75 (price increases to $25.00 after April 15 and $30.00 on the day of show) and are available at sweethomechicago2022.org. A very limited number of VIP Meet & Greet tickets, available at the same link, are $140.50 and include preferred seating, and an exclusive champagne reception with Denali Foxx and Angeria Paris VanMicheals.

In addition to the world premieres, works by Kimberly Archer, Steven Reineke, Tania León, Brent Michael Davids, Julie Giroux, Randall Standridge, Tawnie Olson, Lawren Brianna Ware, Yukiko Nishimura, and Adolphus Hailstork will also be performed.

Conductors Kyle Rhoades, Manic Maxxie, Jon Noworyta, and Jadine Louie will lead two full symphonic bands. Each band will play half the concert, with nearly 250 musicians gracing the stage over the course of the evening! 

The 2022 Annual Conference of the Pride Bands Alliance (formerly Lesbian and Gay Band Association), brings this exciting event to the shores of Lake Michigan in the heart of Downtown Chicago. With the theme “Returning to Our Roots” the conference recalls that in 1982, seven LGBTQ individual music bands from across the country met here in Chicago to unite as one larger music organization, and since those early years, Pride Bands Alliance has grown exponentially into the successful international music organization it is today. Forty years later, there is no better way to mark the accomplishments of Pride Bands Alliance than where it originated, back in the Midwest and in the hometown of a founding member.  

Christen Taylor Holmes (b. 2000) born and raised in Southern Maryland is an emerging Composer and French Hornist. She graduated from Calvert High School in 2018 and is currently at the University of Maryland where she is in the process of earning a Bachelor of Music in Music Composition, a Bachelor of Science in Information Sciences, and a minor in Arts Leadership. Through UMD, she has experienced many fantastic opportunities like collaborating with professional chamber groups such as yMusic and Dal Niente, and participating as a Fellow for the Sphinx Connect Conference in Detroit, MI.

The music of Evan Williams has been performed across the country and internationally by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Quince Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, and at festivals such as SEAMUS and the New York City Electronic Music Festival. In addition, he has been commissioned by notable performers and ensembles including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, and many more. For this concert’s world premiere, Mr. Williams will draw inspiration from the poetry of Claude McKay, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. McKay was bisexual and spent the last four years of his life in Chicago. Williams plans to compose a fantasia-like piece of many moods, reflective of McKay’s ungendered love poems. 

For more information, please visit:
sweethomechicago2022.org and lakesidepride.org

On March 19, 20, and 27 at BFI Southbank in London, England the 89-minute documentary film Jimmy in Saigon (jimmyinsaigon.com) will have its World Premiere. Jimmy in Saigon explores the tragic death, radical life, and forbidden romance of a 24-year-old Vietnam veteran who died in Saigon in 1972.

Featuring modern day scenes shot in the United States, Vietnam and France, as well as archival footage, the film is directed by Peter McDowell, Jimmy’s youngest brother, with Dan Savage as the executive producer.

The original musical score was written by the filmmaker’s brother, John McDowell (composer of Oscar-winning Born Into Brothels) and by Italian-German singer and composer Sabina Sciubba (lead singer of the GRAMMY®-nominated electropop powerhouse Brazilian Girls; actor in the television series Baskets).

Screenings will be held on March 19 at 1:45pm and March 20 at 1:00pm at BFI Southbank Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XT, United Kingdom; ticketing information is at bfi.org.uk/flare

Due to the popularity of the film at BFI Flare, an additional screening was added as part of their “Best of Fest” program on March 27 at 3:10pm.

Jimmy’s rejection of his family’s values and his eventual death created deep trauma within the lives of his surviving family and complicated how he was remembered.

2022 is both the year of completion for the film and the 50th anniversary of Jimmy’s death in Saigon. As we both celebrate finishing the film and commemorate the anniversary of Jimmy’s last year in Saigon, his provocative choices cause us to reflect: how has the United States changed, or remained stagnant in terms of foreign policy, domestic politics, and national conversations surrounding sexual identity? As a kick off points to these discussions, Jimmy in Saigon provides a window to fruitful and lively dialogues.

Through making the film, it has come to light that Jimmy had a relationship with a Vietnamese man in the last few years before his death –  a relationship he kept secret from his friends and family in the U.S. A veteran from a middle class, catholic, background, returns to the country where he was involved in a war in order to be with a Vietnamese man from a poor family; the story of Jimmy’s life asks difficult questions still relevant today.

For more about Jimmy in Saigon, please visit the film’s website: jimmyinsaigon.com

Surrounded by opera as a child and trained as a musician and actor, Director and Producer Peter McDowell has always been drawn to melding story, image and sound in his own stage and film productions. Born and raised in Champaign, Illinois, he produced opera professionally in Chicago from 1999-2006; prior to that, he made two Super 8 short films that were shown at San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival. One of those shorts, I Dream of Dorothy, went on to festivals worldwide.

In addition to filmmaking, Peter works as a fundraiser, publicist, and a teacher of fundraising, which has helped him bridge the creative aspects of filmmaking with the more managerial aspects essential for production. Peter recently served as Director of Development for American Friends of the Louvre, and is the recipient of a highly competitive three year DeVos Institute for Arts Management International Fellowship at the University of Maryland. In 2018, Peter was also the recipient of a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artists Program grant for Jimmy in Saigon, and in 2020 he won a California Humanities Council grant, also for this film. He currently resides in Los Angeles and runs his own firm, Peter McDowell Arts Consulting, currently teaching fundraising workshops for filmmakers and other artists.

As a kick off and preview to her forthcoming album project: Nodding Terms, Los Angeles composer and producer Shruti Kumar releases the record’s first single: SALT, on December 18th, 2021, on streaming platforms worldwide including Apple Music/iTunes and Spotify. The full album boasts a top-tier, all-women technical team, self-produced by Kumar, engineered by Fiona Cruikshank (Dot Allison, Marc Shaiman, Jacob Collier), mixed by Eva Reistad (Hans Zimmer, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus), and mastered by Heba Kadry (Björk, Big Thief, Animal Collective, Beach House, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Garbage, Japanese Breakfast).

Inspired by the Joan Didion quote, “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not,” Kumar’s Nodding Terms in its entirety is slated for self-release by Kumar in Spring 2022. The album centers on the notion of allowing influences and musical sensibilities from all stages, experiences, and memories to coexist. It aims to counter the convention that one needs just one sound or story—that a conversation of ideas is far more fulfilling.

Lead single SALT (7 minutes, 43 seconds) explores nuance and delivery with cinematic flair. With bends, flutters, and smart dynamics, this instrumental work finds the artist asking how many ways can a single idea be expressed. Recorded at Church Studios in London by the London Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt (Radiohead, Foals), SALT weaves strings, synths, and innovative production to get the most of an emotional arc. Kumar observes, “A simple idea delivered with slight differences can provide entirely different meanings to those listening.”

Kumar’s concept is driven by many takes on defining ‘salt’: as an abundant edible crystal compound; an adjective once used to mean lustful or lascivious, now taken as down-to-earth, coarse, embittered, or sassy; and with gravity, the 1930 Salt March (also known as the Salt Satyagraha or Dandi March), which was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mohandas Gandhi — a moment in time that directly inspired this piece’s presentation and form.

While SALT delves into the expressions that suggest varying meanings from the same thought, LAST CALL (its counterpart featuring Zimbabwean-American singer-songwriter Shungudzo, to be released shortly) delves into the parallel obsession with searching for meaning in every thought.

“I find it an exciting way to introduce many musical elements to a potentially wider audience,” adds Kumar. “Making this record over lockdown with people all over the world and such an incredible group of collaborators — it’s been really unique in the sense of its aim to completely mix/eliminate genre.” Kumar will release these works in couples until the full album is released in the Spring. 

In addition to the innovative and highly respected London Contemporary Orchestra, this first installation will feature artists Shungudzo, Def Sound, Brandon Walters (Lord Huron), Seema Hari, BISHI, Drum & Lace, Aaron Steele (Portugal, The Man, Hayley Williams, Natalie Prass), Lara Somogyi, Stephanie Matthews (Adele, Lauryn Hill, We Are King), Ro Rowan, Marta Honer (Fleet Foxes, Angel Olsen), Emily Retsas (Phoebe Bridgers, Kim Gordon), Hal Rosenfeld, with other artists to be revealed.

For more information about Shruti, please visit shrutikumar.com