Karavika - Instrumental Ensemble
Karavika is a New York City based ensemble led by violinist Trina Basu and cellist Amali Premawardhana. As two artists with roots in India, Sri Lanka and North America, Trina and Amali aspire to discover and bring to light the music of their own cultural backgrounds as well as music from other parts of the world that has deeply inspired them. Drawing upon influences of nature, beauty, simple folk melodies and complex classical compositions, Karavika seeks to blend creative improvisations and arrangements with authentic traditions. They are joined by Perry Wortman on bass and collaborate with multiple Indian classical percussionists and other instrumentalists.
Since its creation, Karavika has been active in the New York City creative music scene, collaborating with artists such as violinist, Arun Ramamurthy, vocalists Roopa Mahadevan and Reeni Rostad, and percussionists Avi Shah, Sameer Gupta, Ehren Hanson and Rajna Swaminathan, among others.
The group has conducted children’s workshops at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Greenwich House and Music UnBoxed and performed regularly at NYC series’ such as Carnatic Sundays at Cornelia Street Café, the Brooklyn Raga Massive, and Classical Revolution.
They were featured in the Tagore Society’s 2012 event honoring the great Bengali Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, held at the NYC Indian Consulate. As festival participants, they have been featured at Brooklyn’s 2013 Prospect Park Fiddle Festival, Brooklyn Arts Council’s 2012 Half The Sky Festival: Women in Traditional Performance, the 2012 Classical Revolution Music Festival held in the San Francisco bay area, the 2012 WKCR Raga Live Festival at Columbia University, the first annual “Sangeeth Utsav” Carnatic Music Festival at Cornelia Street Cafe as well as the 2011 NYC Winter Jazz Festival.
Karavika’s music has been featured as soundtrack for the film, “Kids of the Majestic”, an award-winning documentary by Dylan Verrechia exploring the world of impoverished children living in Bangalore’s Majestic railway station. Karavika has been honored to perform for organizations such as Global Health Bridge, Asha, an education and health care agency that provides support in impoverished communities in India, the Watershed Management Group, which works on improving health and sanitation conditions in India and other underdeveloped parts of Asia, and Sneha, a U.S. based South Asian organization that supports and upholds women who have been victims of domestic abuse.
Karavika has been showcased live on IndiaTalks TV based in Queens as well as the world-wide social networking event, TEDx Gotham, at which they were broadcast live on the web from the Cooper Union in New York.
Their second album is due to be released in late 2015, and will feature music exploring themes of family and motherhood. Tracks include interpretations of American lullabies, classical compositions from South India, an arrangement of a piece by Rabindranath Tagore as well as a popular Sri Lankan melody.
This event is part of Chhandayan's 2018 All Night Concert. To go to that event, click the button below:
This event is partially sponsored by the New York Council on the Arts:
