Kalamazoo-nativemusician Rohan Krishnamurthy will bring his innovative Alaya Project to his hometown on Thursday, Sep 18 at 7 p.m. as part of the Connecting Chords Music Festival. He has been featured on the festival over the last two decades, including in its earlier incarnation as the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music.
The mridangam player, now based in Oakland, California, tells Cara Lieurance, "My entire journey, musically and otherwise really started in Kalamazoo," His initiation into Indian classical Carnatic music began with a Western Michigan University student from India who had training in the tradition.
The Alaya Project represents a significant evolution from Krishnamurthy's traditional roots, incorporating jazz and funk elements alongside his classical Indian percussion training. "There was never one day where I just kind of woke up in the morning and said, okay, we need an Indo-Funk jazz band," he explains. "It was years and years and years of kind of ideas, kind of brewing and conversations and experiments."
The ensemble features a unique hybrid drum kit that combines full drum set elements with traditional Carnatic percussion including the mridangam, ghatam clay drum, and vocal percussion. Joining Krishnamurthy are saxophonist Prasant Radhakrishnan, who brings bilingual fluency in both Carnatic music and jazz, and keyboardist Colin Hogan, who Krishnamurthy describes as a "Bay Area heavyweight in the jazz world."
The group officially launched in 2017, somewhat accidentally, when Krishnamurthy was asked to perform on a Beatles tribute concert. "They hit me up and said, hey, you know, Rohan, can you do a cover of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite?" he recalls. That performance with Radhakrishnan and Hogan became the foundation for what would become the Alaya Project.
Despite pandemic challenges, the trio has now performed nearly 50 shows together and released a full album in 2022. Krishnamurthy notes that rhythm serves as a "universal" connecting element between genres, while improvisation represents a shared philosophy between Indian classical music and jazz.
"It's always great to come back," says Krishnamurthy. For the musician who attended Kalamazoo Central High School and Kalamazoo College, this performance represents both a homecoming and an opportunity to share his evolving artistic vision with Midwest audiences. The Alaya Project will make additional stops in South Bend, IN, Chicago, IL, and Madison, WI. The tour is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Tickets and details are available at the Connecting Chords Music Festival website.
This interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
