Keshav Batish & Friends in Sonic Kinship – Album Release Celebration

Keshav Batish is a performer, composer, and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is trained in Hindustani classical and South Asian folk music by his father, Pandit Ashwin Batish, and his aunt, Shrimati Meena Batish. Batish’s debut album, Binaries in Cycle, was recognized in 2021 as one of 10 Best Bay Area albums by KQED and received critical acclaim from JazzTimes, DownBeat, and the Brooklyn Rail.

Batish recently received a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz, for which he recorded his third album, Sonic Kinship. Sonic Kinship melds ragas – the melodic forms of Hindustani music – with the rhythmic ensemble dynamics of the likes of Andrew Hill and Masabumi Kikuchi to find new musical vistas through ancient forms. The album grew from his sense that “every musical note carries a character shaped by its relationship with others, and that closer attention to timing and tuning can deepen the feeling of music to foster healing through sound.” 

Batish experimented with how to translate the effect of shruti, the Sanskritic idea referring to the discernible difference between notes, from solo-centric Hindustani music to a group of many musicians by employing its practical vehicle known as meend. Meend traditionally sounds like a gliding movement between notes and is heard across South Asian musical practices. Sonic Kinship reimagines the dialogue between the two concepts, such that meend balances the shrutis of many notes so they float together in succession to create a blissful sonic space.

Batish is joined on this performance by Bay Area luminaries Kristen Strom on tenor saxophone, Shay Salhov on alto saxophone, Scott Sorkin on guitar, and Stan Poplin on double bass in an album release celebration for Sonic Kinship.

Keshav Batish Website
(Ticket Includes 5% City of Santa Cruz Admission Tax)