Biography

Ramya Thiyagarajan is an emerging composer currently pursuing an MA in Composition and Ethnomusicology at Hunter College. She comes from a lineage that cherishes South Indian classical music, and her early years were dedicated to learning the violin within this tradition, eventually transitioning to vocal training. A chance encounter with Western choral music, led to a transformative decision to pursue an undergraduate degree in Western Classical music, focusing on vocal studies and composition. Concurrently, she continued to hone her Indian vocal techniques with the distinguished Kalaimamani Yogam Santhanam in Chennai, and performing solo concerts across India. She has also worked and performed with the Grammy-award winning Indian composer of film music, AR Rahman. Exploring these diverse and rich traditions of music has been a fascinating and thought-provoking journey, and her compositional work often blends the emotive power of the ragas and the vibrant rhythmic elements of the tala system with Western music's rich harmonic language and orchestration, as they produce compelling soundscapes. She likes writing for voice and finding interesting ways to connect text and music, while also delighting in the abstract expressions of purely instrumental ensembles. As a vocalist, she delves into Indian voice with contemporary stylistic elements, composing her original works in both English and Indian languages, and has published an EP and Single under her artistic alias, Mukura.