Kamala Sankaram (born 1978) is an American composer, vocalist, playwright and actress. Based in New York City, she is best known for chamber operas about women who find themselves in situations where they are forced to confront patriarchal structures. Sankaram is also known for incorporating the latest technologies (e.g., virtual reality) and discussing the social effects of technology in musical theater works.
The daughter of an Indian father and a white American mother, Sankaram was born in Orange County, California, and grew up largely in Ramona, a small town in San Diego County. She took some piano lessons as a child, but her interest soon turned to theater. She said, “I was in a theater show called Choice in Southern California. I would do these big dance and song numbers and that’s what got me even more interested in it. I wanted to be on Broadway!” [1]
In 1996, Sankaram moved to New York to attend Sarah Lawrence College. She then went on to earn a doctorate in cognitive psychology at the New School of Social Research. Her 2013 dissertation examines how interactivity affects the way people process information on the Internet. She concludes, “Reading on the Internet may also have the potential to create a more positive effect on reading in the form of deeper information processing. In particular, reading may be enhanced by the presence of some form of interactive, two-way communication, such as a comments section.”[2]
Sankaram’s musical career began taking off as she was finishing her Ph.D., ironically because, as she says, “I couldn’t get any grant money to research on Twitter, but people started asking me to write more music.”[3] As a composer, her current catalogue includes eleven musical theatrical works, some of which have been produced by the Washington National Opera, the Los Angeles Opera and the Houston Grand Opera, and numerous vocal and instrumental chamber works. With regards to her musical inspirations, Sankaram stated, “I have played as much rock and avant jazz as I have classical music, and those connections are found in the music I write.” In the same interview, she also said, “I grew up hearing a lot Carnatic music in my house, so I think that those modalities are always present. As far as specific influences, they range from [Anthony] Braxton to Strauss to Radiohead and Pink Floyd.”[4] She also loves Bollywood songs, and incorporates elements of this style in many works.
As a coloratura soprano, Sankaram has starred in many of her own works, and performed with Anthony Braxton, Meredith Monk, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and the Wooster Group. She is also the leader of Bombay Rickey, a five-piece band that evokes 1960’s movie soundscapes through a fusion of surf music, cumbia, Bollywood, film noir jazz, Spaghetti Western, and opera.
Sankaram teaches musical composition at State University of New York-Purchase, and is co-Artistic Director of Experiments in Opera, a New York-based company that believes in “re-writing the history of opera” through producing new works that are “adventurous and fun, focused on strong and intimate storytelling.”[5] With regard to the latter role, she said, “We tend to hire those that we can think of quickly, and we tend to be able to think of people who are most similar to us more quickly than people who are not. As both a woman and a person of South Asian descent, my worldview and my network are different than many people in the field. Therefore, as a gatekeeper, I see my role as inviting people to the table who may not have had an invitation before.”[6]