Arun Ramamurthy Trio Fuses Jazz With Carnatic Music In Unique Ways

By John Roos

Indian classical violinist Arun Ramamurthy has studied under some of the great Carnatic masters including the celebrated siblings, Sri Mysore Nagaraj and Dr. Mysore Manjunath, and violinist A. Ananthakrishnan. He’s also shared the stage with the revered Mashkoor Ali Khan, Amir ElSaffar, and Hamid Al-Saadi, among others.

With that in mind, it might surprise you that the person exerting the most influence on his professional musical career was his grandmother, Ambuja. She was a violinist who loved Carnatic music, a form of Indian classical music with origins in Southern India. According to Ramamurthy, who was the youngest of eight grandchildren, Ambuja—who went by the nickname Aaji—stuck with him year after year while encouraging him to be true to himself regardless of anyone’s expectations.

Rather than travel down the conventional path of pursuing purely Carnatic music, Ramamurthy’s adventurous spirit took hold, leading him over unchartered waters to blend raga, jazz, and western classical music into something transformative, an ever-evolving style that’s become uniquely his own.

“There was power in what she was saying,” recalled Ramamurthy during a recent phone interview the morning after a free performance last Saturday afternoon at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens. “She passed away 15 years ago and was the only grandparent I had. We were very close and my grandmother told me to be an individual, that no one can be you but you. She pushed me to find my personal voice in music. It was very profound and it really affected me.”

The Brooklyn-based, New Jersey-raised Ramamurthy is now touring in Northern California with his Carnatic classical and jazz trio, which also include Fremont-raised, longtime drummer Sameer Gupta, and bassist Damon Banks, who joined the fold about two years ago to replace Perry Wortman. This is the current trio’s West Coast debut with support by a grant from South Arts. The program focuses on music from the just-recorded but yet to be released New Moon Suite, a personal and introspective four-part work commissioned by Chamber Music America. (Percussionist Rohan Krishnamurthy will be sitting in for a song or two during Saturday’s concert at the Jazz Conservatory.)

While shining a light on the teachings and wisdom of his ancestors, Ramamurthy at the same time walks the tricky line of paying homage to tradition while simultaneously modernizing the musical idiom in unique ways.

“Reverence is one of the words that I thought of when composing New Moon Suite,” he said. “I wanted to honor my grandmother, my mom—who is a violinist and vocalist-and my father who is a civil engineer (and wrote short stories about both his experience in the profession and being an Indian immigrant.) I am truly humbled by my parents’ journey.”

“One of the four movements is titled 'Mirrors,' and it’s a reflective, emotional piece about looking back. We are given blessings and these lessons from our parents and ancestors, so the question becomes, what are you going to do with them?”

What Ramamurthy is doing--and very well, thank you--is stretching musical borders while championing unity over division. In 2012, he co-founded with Gupta the Brooklyn Raga Massive (BRM) collective, which brought together musicians trained in Indian classical music with artists from other musical styles and traditions. The BRM holds weekly open-jam sessions while supporting numerous projects and commissions, such as Raga Maqam, a 15-person ensemble featuring acclaimed artists hailing from America, India, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, and Jordan. The primarily Indian and Iraqi instrumentation is just as eclectic as the ensemble, bringing together players of the santur, oud, qanun, violin, sitar, bansuri, ney, shehnai, kamancheh, tabla, and more.

Turning to his own creations, Ramamurthy collaborated as a duo with his violinist wife, Trina Basu, to record Nakshatra, an awe-inspiring collection of mostly their original compositions released earlier this year that bend string chamber music and raga into intoxicating new shapes. Check out the duo’s performance of Bach’s Little Fugue and Raga Keeravani, an incredible arrangement of Bach’s Little Fugue in G minor and an improvisation in the Carnatic raga Keeravani: https://www.arunramamurthy.com/nakshatra

For Ramamurthy, improvisation lies at the core of his creative persona, no matter the style of music or the collaborators involved. Add a little adventurous experimentation, and the possibilities are limitless.

“In this trio, there is an openness where we put the music right in the center of the three of us, and we just see where it goes,” he explained. “Improvisation is a huge part of jazz and Carnatic music as well. A lot of what evolves when we’re onstage, and even in the studio, becomes a surprise. We just have this (good) chemistry where we’re feeling each other out, (go) where the inherent rhythms create openings, where we can react to each other in very organic ways. I just love the energy, and how we’re always learning and evolving.”

Music in the right hands can surely impact lives in healthy ways. The healing power of music is something that Ramamurthy feels very connected to. His wife, Trina, is a trained music therapist, so this inherent quality is something that literally hits close to home for the couple (which has two children.) It’s the spiritual component of eastern music, and Carnatic in particular, that allows listeners to forge a path forward where peace and serenity can buoy those in crisis over some troubled or disturbing waters.

“Music is like meditation in the sense it can connect you to positive experiences, and therefore calm and ease your mind so we feel connected to things in a deeper way,” suggests Ramamurthy. “It’s amazing what healing properties it has, especially on children who have experienced some kind of trauma in their lives.”

*The Arun Ramamurthy Trio performs Friday at the Battery, 717 Battery St., San Francisco; (415) 230-8000. 8 p.m. Also, Saturday at the California Jazz Conservatory, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley; (510) 845-5373. 8 p.m. $25. www.arunramamurthy.com.