The premiere of a collaborative and co-creative vocal ensemble of five vocalists, composers, and improvisers Amirtha Kidambi, Miriam Elhajli, Shara Lunon, and isabel crespo pardo.
Lines of Light was formed in direct response to attacks on women, non-binary, and trans people’s bodily autonomy and the interconnection to the struggle for racial justice. Conceptually, the vocal ensemble is driven by the idea that communal singing is a direct path towards community building and collective liberation, drawing from forms such as Indian folk and devotional bhajans, gospel and other vocal folk and improvised traditions. In working with female identifying, non-binary and trans artists with distinctive artistic voices, backgrounds and identities, we aim to bring these voices into powerful dialogue, to effect healing and transformation, through solidarity with each other and the audience.
While the vocal ensemble format is one of the most universal in music from around the world, in the jazz and classical avant-gardes it has been marginalized. This is due in no small part to the gendering of the voice as female. The voice is primarily utilized as a soloist, separate from other musicians and de-intellectualized and undervalued for its intuitive capacity, qualities which are also implicitly gendered. The artists in this group are highly virtuosic vocalists, improvisers, composers and performers isabel crespo pardo, Miriam Elhajli, Shara Lunon and Amirtha Kidambi. These vocalists have far reaching range, utilizing an arsenal of timbral expressive techniques and drawing from various vocal traditions from around the world, from ancient to contemporary. The pieces for the group will be collectively and collaboratively conceived, using non-hierarchical models of co-creation in the compositional and improvisational process.
“Amirtha Kidambi is heavily invested in decolonization and deconstruction of borders physical, mental and musical” (NPR). Spanning free jazz, punk, noise and Indian devotional music, she crafts subversive sounds challenging hegemony. Leading the protest ensemble Elder Ones, her work garners critical acclaim from the New York Times, NPR, Wire Magazine, Pitchfork and the Downbeat Critics Poll, recently releasing their incendiary third album New Monuments. Kidambi has received grants and residencies from Pioneer Works, EMPAC, Mid-Atlantic Arts, NYFA and Jerome Foundation and collaborates with luminaries such as Mary Halvorson, Luke Stewart, William Parker and Darius Jones, and is the composer for the anti-colonial films of Suneil Sanzgiri exhibited at Brooklyn Museum.
Miriam Elhajli is a folk singer, composer-improviser, and musicologist. Elhajli lives in New York City where she performs & works as a researcher at The Association for Cultural Equity founded by Alan Lomax. Moving in the intersection of the vibrant avant-garde and the folkloric communities of Brooklyn, she has collaborated with musicians such as Adam O’Farrill, Sélène-Sainte-Aime, Shahzad Isamily, Jen Shyu, and The Cradle. Elhajli has released four records on her label Numina Records, a label she founded to aid in the documentation of traditional women’s music in the Maghreb and beyond. Numina is set to release Moroccan chaabi ensemble, Bnat El Houariyat’s in August of this year. “A haunting voice” – The New York Times
Shara Lunon is the product of the evolution of Black American musical traditions. As a poet, vocalist, composer, and improviser, her art finds the ethereal in the chaotic. With voice as the foundation, Shara’s music is an exploration of text and sound that seamlessly weaves through the ongoing relationship of struggle, resilience, and resolution. Her goal is to challenge lassitude and in its place, instill hope.
isabel crespo pardo (they/them) is a NYC-based latinx vocalist, improviser-composer, and interdisciplinary artist. Their work actively entangles music, visual art, text and performance, always evolving to reflect the intra/interpersonal spaces they inhabit. For Crespo, art is a place to gather, to exercise intuition, rigor and delight. They are deeply invested in building generative structures and intentionally inviting others into focused explorations.