About

"Śabdagatitāra" is the name of our musical network. This unusual name comes from a new concept introduced into musicological discourse in 2021 by Sandeep Bhagwati. 

“Śabdagatitāra” means, in Sanskrit: "the crossing ("tāra") of methods of making ("gati") sound ("śabda")". 

“Śabdagatitāra” refers to a trans-traditional approach to music-making and artistic research that perceives and experiences the musics of the world, regardless of where and in what context they originated, as being deeply and profoundly connected to one another. Our projects seek to explore these cross-connections through artistic musical making. 

As a research-creation ensemble Śabdagatitāra, founded in 2023, is an international project initiated by musicians who, on the basis of the previous regional ensemble projects in Berlin, Montréal, Pune, Oslo and Toronto that Bhagwati had created and led, are now aiming to establish a worldwide network. Śabdagatitāra will always appear in varying line-ups across national boundaries, and can thus be supported by a variety of funding sources.

We want to provoke a new discourse and way of being together that goes beyond the usual organisational format for music ensembles. We devise tradition-inclusive and tradition-challenging projects that can activate the network in its various global contexts.

One central idea might give rise to different events realizations - which can resonate with each specific constellation of traditions and places. These can range from music concerts in concert halls or outdoor settings to site-specific ensemble installations in or around museums, from activist interventions to academic colloquia. Current technologies from generative, interactive scores to artificial intelligence are also of interest to the Śabdagatitāra network: Bhagwati has been active in this field of artistic research for many years. 

In the unusual performances of Śabdagatitāra, both players and listeners explore how the most disparate types and ways of sounding together can emerge in a comprovisatory manner, i.e. in an interplay between the conceived and the spontaneous. 

This results in musical events that are shaped and supported by the historical and contemporary traditions of the participants - and by many new sound possibilities that the musicians discover for their instruments and for their ears. They play with resonance and creative misunderstanding, i.e. with their own conditioned perception of others, but also with how their own music may sound in the ears of others. But they also play with the memories and hunches of the listeners, with the space and its architecture, with sensibilities beyond human hearing, with literary and artistic resources. 

In Śabdagatitāra projects, sounds and aesthetics emerge from their different temporalities and historical traditions and become a multi-layered stream of events: from the search for a new musical thinking, breathing as an organism seeking intersections, synapses, frictions, playful ideas thus grow into unpredictable, astonishing, complex and exciting performances.

Many of the musicians of Śabdagatitāra are rooted in more than one musical tradition. Thus, many ways of thinking, listening and making music meet in unpredictable conjunctions. One can enter into a creative-searching process together, in which one's own origins are less important than simple aesthetic openness. 

Each musician is involved as an explorative personality in the process of creating a differentiated collaboration. What they bring with them, their respective musical traditions, become a historical and aesthetic perspective against whose background and by whose means they can question and reformulate contemporary questions of music-making. 

The musicians work with Sandeep Bhagwati as their musical and artistic director. An important part of his work is to create the framework for making music together: to filter and bundle the basic ideas, forces of attraction and synergies between the musicians by listening carefully - and to give them structure.