"Samita's work is both an embrace and an argument with the past. Its effect is to create an up-to-the-minute aesthetic that reflects that transnational, planetary, technologically sophisticated culture of the 21st century. She is a citizen of the world."
As a composer/ performer and improviser, Sinha uses her voice as her primary instrument, along with tanpura and analog and digital electronics. She has performed her solo and ensemble work at PS 1, Roulette, Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts, Blue Note, and Issue Project Room, at universities such as UC Berkeley, NYU, Macalaster College, and St. Olaf, as well as abroad in India and the Middle East. Sinha also performs with ANATOMY, a duo Hindustani/ jazz groove-heavy electronic music project with Marc Cary, and uses her voice as an improvising instrument in jazz ensembles including Marc Cary’s FOCUS and Sunny Jain Collective. She has received awards from NYSCA and Urban Artists Initiative to create and compose new works, from Queens Council on the Arts for community music work, and from the Fulbright Foundation to study Hindustani music in India.
Sinha speaks and sings in several languages including Hindi, Urdu, Brajh, Bengali, Sanskrit, Mandarin Chinese, English, and Spanish. Her passion for language has led to collaborations with poets—she is currently working with Fiona Templeton to compose a score for The Medead, Templeton’s performance epic retelling of the story of Medea. From 2005 to 2007 Sinha toured as a vocalist with the late poet/ griot Sekou Sundiata’s music theater work, the 51st (dream) state, which appeared at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Aaron Davis Hall, and universities and theaters around the country. Sinha also performs with The Phoneme Choir, a project by Daria Fain and Robert Kocik that integrates qi gong and movement with the sounds of language.
Sinha’s work spans a range of genres, scenes, and contexts, moving from contemporary/ experimental art spaces to jazz clubs, traditional home concert settings to theaters. Inspired by Sundiata’s call to artists to create new public rituals, Sinha’s extends her practice beyond the art world by leading Community Sings—events that bring different people together in one room for singing and dialogue—in her own Queens neighborhood as well as in York, Alabama. She teaches music, especially the intersection of music and culture, in NYC public schools through Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y.
Sinha received her MFA in Music/ Sound from Bard, and her BA in Literature (with a focus on Cultural Criticism and Mandarin) from Yale. She has studied Hindustani music with Dr. Alka Deo Marulkar and Shiv Shankar Pandey, and currently trains with Shubhangi Sakhalkar.
–Sekou Sundiata
"Samita Sinha's voice weaves a thread of melody through a braid of sound unlike any I've ever heard, skipping across musical borders and traditions to create something magical and new."-Amitav Ghosh
Samita Sinha is an artist and vocalist/ composer based in New York. She combines tradition with experiment to create new forms, drawing from a deep grounding in North Indian classical music, a contemporary vocabulary, folk and ritual music, and songs and texts in several languages. Her work reconfigures given inheritances, and combines raw, visceral energy with knowledge garnered from classical tradition. As a composer/ performer and improviser, Sinha uses her voice as her primary instrument, along with tanpura and analog and digital electronics. She has performed her solo and ensemble work at PS 1, Roulette, Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts, Blue Note, and Issue Project Room, at universities such as UC Berkeley, NYU, Macalaster College, and St. Olaf, as well as abroad in India and the Middle East. Sinha also performs with ANATOMY, a duo Hindustani/ jazz groove-heavy electronic music project with Marc Cary, and uses her voice as an improvising instrument in jazz ensembles including Marc Cary’s FOCUS and Sunny Jain Collective. She has received awards from NYSCA and Urban Artists Initiative to create and compose new works, from Queens Council on the Arts for community music work, and from the Fulbright Foundation to study Hindustani music in India.
Sinha speaks and sings in several languages including Hindi, Urdu, Brajh, Bengali, Sanskrit, Mandarin Chinese, English, and Spanish. Her passion for language has led to collaborations with poets—she is currently working with Fiona Templeton to compose a score for The Medead, Templeton’s performance epic retelling of the story of Medea. From 2005 to 2007 Sinha toured as a vocalist with the late poet/ griot Sekou Sundiata’s music theater work, the 51st (dream) state, which appeared at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Aaron Davis Hall, and universities and theaters around the country. Sinha also performs with The Phoneme Choir, a project by Daria Fain and Robert Kocik that integrates qi gong and movement with the sounds of language.
Sinha’s work spans a range of genres, scenes, and contexts, moving from contemporary/ experimental art spaces to jazz clubs, traditional home concert settings to theaters. Inspired by Sundiata’s call to artists to create new public rituals, Sinha’s extends her practice beyond the art world by leading Community Sings—events that bring different people together in one room for singing and dialogue—in her own Queens neighborhood as well as in York, Alabama. She teaches music, especially the intersection of music and culture, in NYC public schools through Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y.
Sinha received her MFA in Music/ Sound from Bard, and her BA in Literature (with a focus on Cultural Criticism and Mandarin) from Yale. She has studied Hindustani music with Dr. Alka Deo Marulkar and Shiv Shankar Pandey, and currently trains with Shubhangi Sakhalkar.