Praised as “strikingly original” (The New York Times), composer Kamala Sankaram moves freely between the worlds of experimental music and contemporary opera. Her work has been performed internationally at venues including Dutch National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center. She has been an artist in residence at the Glimmerglass Festival, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and is currently in residence at Minnesota Opera. As a biracial Indian American and trained sitarist, Sankaram has drawn on Indian classical music in many of her works, including Thumbprint, A Rose, Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers, Jungle Book, and the forthcoming The Many Deaths of Laila Starr.

Also known for pushing the boundaries of form and style, she has created an opera for the trees of Prospect Park (as winner of the 2021 Creative Time Open Call), the world’s first virtual reality opera, an augmented reality music walk for Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and a techno-noir featuring live datamining of the audience, among other pieces. Sankaram is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an award-winning operatic Bollywood surf ensemble. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music in New York City.