Two Evening Concerts of Raga Darbari in the contemporary Kirana gharana (style) of North Indian Classical Music will be performed by La Monte Young and The Just Alap Raga Ensemble in tribute to the 29th Anniversary Memorial of Pandit Pran Nath and to the 1st Anniversary Memorial of Marian Zazeela on June 20th and 23rd, at 7:00 pm in the MELA Foundation Dream House light environment, 275 Church Street, 3rd Floor.

The Just Alap Raga Ensemble will perform Pandit Pran Nath's special arrangement of "Hazrat Turkaman", a traditional vilampit khayal composition set in Raga Darbari. In 2009, with deep respect for Pandit Pran Nath’s arrangement of this great composition, "Hazrat Turkaman", Young composed two-part harmony for the ‘sthayi and for the antara. As in his 2003 composition “Raga Sundara” set in Raga Yaman Kalyan, the harmony line for these compositions in Raga Darbari continues the introduction of two-part harmony into Indian classical khayal composition, reinforcing the contribution of this new element into Indian classical music. The harmony for the ‘sthayis of "Hazrat Turkaman" is dedicated to Jung Hee Choi and was composed as a present on her birthday, November 1, 2009; the harmony for the antara is dedicated to Pandit Pran Nath and was composed on his 91st birthday, November 3, 2009.

Young considers The Just Alap Raga Ensemble to be one of the most significant creations in the development of his compositional process in that it organically merges the traditions of Western and Hindustani classical musics with the knowledge of acoustical science to embody complementary forms in an encompassing evolutionary statement. Pandit Pran Nath has said, "Alap is the essence of Raga. When the drut [faster tempo] begins, the Raga is finished." With The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, Young applies his own compositional approach to traditional raga performance, form and technique: a pranam (bow) of gratitude in reciprocation for the influence on his music, since the mid-fifties, of the unique, slow, unmetered timeless alap, and for one of the most ancient and evolved vocal traditions extant today. The Ensemble features extended alap sections, sustained vocal and instrumental drones, two- and three-part harmony and counterpoint in just intonation over tamburas. Young, Zazeela and Choi premiered this ensemble on August 22, 2002 in a memorial tribute to Ustad Hafizullah Khan, the Khalifa of the Kirana gharana and son of Pandit Pran Nath’s teacher, Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan Sahib.

Pandit Pran Nath virtually introduced the vocal tradition of North Indian classical music to the West in 1970. His 1971 morning performance at Town Hall, New York City, was the first concert of morning ragas to be presented in the U.S. Subsequently, he introduced and elaborated to Western audiences the concept of performing ragas at the proper time of day by scheduling entire series of concerts at special hours. Many students and professional musicians came to him in America to learn about the vast system of raga and to improve their musicianship. In 1972, Pran Nath established his own school in New York City under the direction of his disciples La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music, now a project of MELA Foundation. Over the years Pran Nath performed hundreds of concerts in the West, scores of them in New York City, and in Fall 1993, he inaugurated the MELA Foundation Dream House with three Raga Cycle concerts. He continued to perform here annually during his remaining years and on May 12 and 17, 1996, his two concerts of Afternoon and Evening Ragas in the Dream House were his last public performances before he passed away on June 13, 1996.

Pran Nath's majestic expositions of the slow alap sections of ragas combined with his emphasis on perfect intonation and the clear evocation of mood had a profound impact on Western contemporary composers and performers. Following Young and Zazeela, minimalist music composer Terry Riley became one of his first American disciples. Fourth-world trumpeter Jon Hassell, jazz all-stars Don Cherry and Lee Konitz, composers Jon Gibson, Yoshimasa Wada, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison and Allaudin Mathieu, Shabda Kahn, Pir of the Sufi Ruhaniat International, mathematician and composer Catherine Christer Hennix, concept artist and violinist Henry Flynt, dancer Simone Forti, and many others took the opportunity to study with the master.

In The Hindustan Times (2003), Shanta Serbjeet Singh wrote:


In the 2005 article, “Tales Of Exemplary Guru Bhakti / Pran Nath, La Monte Young And Marian Zazeela,” published in the SPIC MACAY (Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth) quarterly magazine "The Eye," it is noted:
 

American Music, Winter 2009, reviewed the Ensemble's March 2009 performance at the Guggenheim Museum:
 
In his LA Times Blog, critic Mark Swed wrote of the Ensemble's 2009 performance of the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra in Raga Sindh Bhairavi:
 

---

La Monte Young pioneered the concept of extended time durations in 1957 and for over 60 years contributed extensively to the development of just intonation and rational number-based tuning systems in his performance works and the periodic composite sound waveform environments of the Dream House collaborations formulated in 1962 with Marian Zazeela. Presentations of his work in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his theoretical writings gradually had a wide-ranging influence on contemporary music, art and philosophy, including Minimalism, concept art, Fluxus, performance art and conceptual art. In L.A. in the '50s, Young played jazz saxophone, leading a group with Billy Higgins, Dennis Budimir and Don Cherry. He also played with Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Terry Jennings, Don Friedman, and Tiger Echols. At Yoko Ono's studio in 1960 he was director of the first New York loft concert series. He was the editor of An Anthology, which with his Compositions 1960 became a primary influence on concept art and the Fluxus movement. In 1962 Young founded his group The Theatre of Eternal Music and embarked on The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, a large work involving improvisation within strict predetermined guidelines. Young and Zazeela helped bring renowned master vocalist Pandit Pran Nath to the U.S. in 1970 and became his first Western disciples. Described by Mark Swed in his October 2009 Los Angeles Times blog as "pure vibratory magic," Young's Just Alap Raga Ensemble, founded in 2002 with Zazeela and their senior disciple Jung Hee Choi, has become his primary performance vehicle. "For the past quarter of a century he has been the most influential composer in America. Maybe in the world." (Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 1985). "As the acknowledged father of minimalism and guru emeritus to the British art-rock school, his influence is pervasive" (Musician magazine, 1986). "Young is now widely recognized as the originator of the most influential classical music style of the final third of the twentieth century." (Strickland, Minimalism:Origins, 1993). "La Monte Young: Le Son du Siècle." (L'Express L'An 2000 Supplement, 1999).

Marian Zazeela is one of the first contemporary artists to use light as a medium of expression. Expanding the traditional concepts of painting and sculpture while incorporating elements of both disciplines, she developed an innovative visual language in the medium of light by combining colored light mixtures with sculptural forms to create seemingly three-dimensional colored shadows in radiant vibrational fields. Zazeela began singing in 1962 with La Monte Young as a founding member of The Theatre of Eternal Music, and performed as vocalist in almost every concert of the ensemble to date, in addition to creating the visual components of Dream House, their collaborative sound and light work. Her major work, The Magenta Lights, has been described in Art Forum as representing "the subtle relationship between precision and spirituality. [She] transforms material into pure and intense color sensations, and makes a perceptual encounter a spiritual experience." With Young in 1970, she brought Pandit Pran Nath to the U.S. and became one of his first Western disciples. She has since performed and taught the Kirana style of Indian classical music and accompanied Pandit Pran Nath in hundreds of concerts throughout the world. Zazeela's distinctive calligraphic style appears on many of Pran Nath's concert posters and recordings. Zazeela's Ornamental Lightyears Tracery has been credited by Glenn Branca in Forced Exposure #16, 1990, and by David Sprague in Your Flesh # 28, 1993, to have been the direct influence on Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The Village Voice listed the [Church Street] Dream House as the Best Art Installation in New York 2014, "A charge for the mind as much as for the eye and ear, the Dream House feels like a gift to our beleaguered city, where headspace is the most precious real estate of all." Zazeela continued to perform as a vocalist until 2018 in The Just Alap Raga Ensemble and The Sundara All Star Band, which she founded with Young and Jung Hee Choi. In 2021 Zazeela was honored as one of the 14 artists to receive the prestigious Anonymous Was A Woman Award in recognition of her significant contributions. Zazeela's rarely-seen master works on paper were featured at Dia:Beacon from 2019 to 2022, and most recently at Zazeela's graphic work and abstract calligraphic drawings, spanning from 1962 through 2003, were on view at Artists Space in New York until May 11, 2024.

Jung Hee Choi is an artist and musician recognized for her extensive series of environmental compositions that explore the concept of "Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest" (2007– ). This series encompasses a diverse array of multimedia installations that integrate light, sound, evolving light-point drawings, incense and performance. The New York Times highlighted Choi's installation, Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest IX, at Dia 15 VI 13 on West 22nd Street, NYC, "With extended listening, what at first seemed mechanically repetitious turns out to be a complex interweaving of different, slowly oscillating pitches. If you give in to it while watching Ms. Choi's hallucinatory screen, you may find yourself in an altered state of consciousness, on the verge of some ineffable, transcendental revelation." Her video sound performance and installation, RICE, commissioned by MELA Foundation, received acclaim as one of the "10 Best of 2003" in the December issue of Artforum. In 1999, Choi became a disciple of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in the study of music and art, with the classical Kirana tradition gandha bandh red-thread ceremony on March 28, 2003. In 2002, she co-founded, with Young and Zazeela, The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, and followed this with the formation of The Sundara Trio in 2009. In 2015, Choi premiered her electroacoustic and modal improvisation ensemble, The Sundara All Star Band. The members include Young, Zazeela, Choi, Jon Catler, Hansford Rowe and Naren Budhkar. The New York Times featured Choi's Tonecycle for Blues performed by her Sundara All Star Band as one of The Best Classical Music Performances of 2017. Since 2009, Choi's long-term multimedia installations have been presented both solo and simultaneously with Young and Zazeela's sound and light in the MELA Dream House, creating a continuous collaborative environment. Choi graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude and received an M.A. in art and sound from New York University. Since 2008 Choi has taught raga at the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music, New York.

Jon Catler graduated summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music where he performed the school’s first microtonal senior recital in 1979, featuring his compositions for solo and group in 31-tone and 19-tone equal temperaments. Since his initiation into the world of microtonal music performance, Catler has played with many music luminaries, most notably legendary Just Intonation composer La Monte Young with whom he has worked for over 30 years, touring and recording as a member of the Forever Bad Blues Band (Gramavision CD), The Theater of Eternal Music Big Band, and the Just Alap Raga Ensemble. Catler has also recorded and toured extensively with his own music, and has appeared as composer and performer on the Futurismo/Futurismi Festival, Manca Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Quebec Festival d'Ete, the Angelica Festival, the World Out Of Tune (W.O.O.T.) Festival, and the American Festival of Microtonal Music of which he is co-founder. Catler performed in the world premier version of Ives' Universe Symphony at Lincoln Center, a climax of AFMM's 30-year history. Catler also performed on the original Harry Partch guitars in a performance of Partch's Oedipus at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Other notable performances include a residency at The Guggenheim with La Monte Young, shows at The Kitchen (NYC), the Knitting Factory, Avery Fischer Hall and Alice Tully Hall, and a live recording of Catler’s groundbreaking orchestral work Evolution for Electric Guitar and Orchestra at New York Society for Ethical Culture. As a recording artist and published author, Catler has released over a dozen critically acclaimed CD’s of original music, all in Harmonic Series Tunings. In 2002, Catler’s first book The Nature of Music was released, explaining his Harmonic discoveries and presenting a tuning system that sets the precedent of evolving our conception of consonance to the 13th Harmonic and beyond. Catler has been the recipient of numerous grants, including a grant for the MicroTime Tour, which featured an interstate touring ensemble that debuted the concept of Just Intonation Rhythm. Catler was also awarded a composer residency grant from Harvestworks in NYC. Catler’s music has been featured on radio shows worldwide, including numerous live interviews on WNYC’s New Sounds with John Schaefer, and on KPFK with John Schneider in Los Angeles. Catler has been teaching private students at his studio since 1982 and is sought out for his expertise in this field. In 2015 he gave a Harmonic Series seminar at Berklee College of Music, and released the second CD with his Harmonic Series jazz group Fretless Brothers.

Hansford Rowe, American bassist, began his career in the clubs of New York City. With French drummer Pierre Moerlen he reformed the jazz-rock group Gong. PM's Gong is considered one of the great fusion bands of the late 70’s. The group was quickly signed to Virgin and later Arista Records. They recorded with Allan Holdsworth (a regular member) and with guests like Mike Oldfield, Mick Taylor (Stones), Steve Winwood and French violinist Didier Lockwood. International touring soon secured Hansford a place among the world's leading bass players and work with Mike Oldfield, John Martyn, Biréli Lagrène, La Monte Young, Gary Husband, Jon Catler and many more. Hansford, with microtonal guitar master Jon Catler, developed the first dedicated Just Intonation bass made by a major manufacturer (Warwick). Hansford has a signature bass with Tao Guitars called the Superleggera. He endorses Ashdown Amplifiers, Supro Basses, DR Strings, Lehle pedals, Applied Acoustic Systems, Peterson tuners and Sommer cables. He was a founding member of the band Gongzilla in the 1990’s which saw the participation of many fine musicians on their five recordings for LoLo Records including Allan Holdsworth again, David "Fuze” Fiuczynski and David Torn. Hansford’s current project is called HRIII.

Naren Budhkar was born into a musical family in Pune, the cultural capital of Western India; he later migrated to America. As a tabla player, he represents a link in the global cultural bridge. Naren studied with Ustad Shabbir Nisar, the tabla wizard from Hyderabad and the son of legendary Ustad Shaikh Dawood. From Ustad Nisar, Naren inherited a wealth of the rich centuries-old tradition of Indian percussion. He has used this tradition to contribute to many world music forms creating a dialogue between music and people the world over. As a classical tabla player Naren has performed with artists from all three categories of Indian music: vocalists, instrumentalists and dancers. Notable among these artists are Pandit Jasraj, Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan, Dr. Alka Deo Marulkar, vocal; Ustad Aashish Khan, sarod; Pandit Ulhas Bapat, santoor; Pandit Barun Kumar Pal, hansveena; Pandit Krishna Bhatt, sitar; Pandit Ramesh Mishra, sarangi; Padmashree Kumudini Lakhia, Kathak. Naren has contributed to many different genres of world music including rock, as a member of the acclaimed group 'Alms for Shanti' with whom he was featured on CNN; Irish-celtic music with the world famous 'De Dannen' band from Ireland; jazz, with the group 'Jazzhole;’ folk through participation in the folk festivals of Canada from Toronto to Vancouver; and opera in a work composed by Doug Cuomo, the music director of Sex and the City. Naren has been interviewed by B.B.C. Asia, featured on the NYU and Princeton radio stations and has been cited by the New York Times, El Diario, Vocero, and New York Newsday. He has performed in Canada, US, India, and the beautiful island of Puerto Rico with the dance ensemble fusion group 'Encuentro,' led by Paulette Beauchamp and Carlos Bedoya. He has performed in the NY Consulate of India, M.I.T., Columbia, Haverford and Kenyon; F.I.T., Aaron Davis Hall, Asia Society, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. He appears on many recordings including Circle of the Sun (Jazz), Indofunk (jazz trumpet), Summer of thousand years (Kurt Reil), Seeds of bliss (Corina Bartra), Enchanted Evening (Deepak Kumar), Kashmkash (Alms for Shanti), Sarva Bhuteshu (Manorama), Sukha Shanti (Anandashram). Naren lives in New York City and is an active performer and teacher. Naren became a member of The Just Alap Raga Ensemble in June 2004.

---

MELA's programs are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and generous contributions from individuals and MELA Members.