Shirish Korde
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Composer Shirish Korde was born June 18, 1945 in Uganda to Indian parents. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) and has previously been on the faculty of the Berklee College of Music, the New England Conservatory, and Brown University. Korde studied jazz and composition at the Berklee College of Music, analysis and composition at the New England Conservatory, and ethnomusicology at Brown University.
His most frequently performed works are: Tenderness of Cranes, for solo flute, influenced by Japanese shakuhachi techniques; Time Grids, for amplified guitar and tape; Constellations, for saxophone quartet; and, Drowned Woman of the Sky, a song cycle based on poems by Pablo Neruda. Korde has composed five large-scale music-theatre works: Chitra, Rasa, Bhima's Journey, The Separate Prison, and The Conquistadors. These works exhibit influences of Asian dramatic and musical forms, especially Balinese Gamelan and shadow puppetry, Vedic chant, Tuva music from Central Asia, North Indian Tala, and shakuhachi music. Jazz elements and computer voice synthesis techniques are also incorporated into his music-theater works. He was described by the Computer Music Journal as one the few “contemporary composers who have been deeply touched by music of non-Western cultures, jazz, and computer technology and who has created a powerful and communicative compositional language."
Korde is the founder of Neuma Records.
