Program Notes

The story goes that when Krishna, the legendary incarnation of Lord Vishnu, was a child, he once was caught eating sand. Concerned, his mother Yashoda scolded him and pried his mouth open. There, instead of dirt, she beheld the entire universe and beyond, with all its galaxies, with every element of the earth, the weather, the human mind and its senses, her own village and she herself.

 This piece was inspired by that fascinating moment, told in the Bhagavata Purana. I imagined it through in different melodic placements of Raag Charukeshi -- a raag that holds longing, tension, transcendence -- with help from the wonderful variety of timbres and ranges that these instruments produces. My goal in retelling this story, sonically, involved the manipulation of sound "perspective," the extremes of near and far, holding both illusion and imagination.