Album Notes

Although it was never specifically planned as such, the theme of water permeates much of Amar Chaudhary’s electro-acoustic and experimental music. Aquatic titles, aquatic sounds and aquatic imagery abound in this collection culled from Amar’s music of the last fifteen years. The music is at once dark, playful, energetic, intellectual, and technically adept. The clever and playful “Open and Shut Case” and “Chimera” expand on simple sounds and themes, such as shutting doors and windchimes, while others like “Black Boxes and Springtime” and “Edge 0316” evoke their own worlds to tell stories. A wide variety of musical styles, instrumentation and technology are also on display.

About the Composer

Amar Chaudhary is a longtime composer and performer specializing in contemporary and electronic music, as well as a developer of advanced software for sound synthesis and music composition. Amar studied composition first with Ruth Schonthal at the Westchester Conservatory of Music in New York from 1983 to 1991, and then at Yale University from 1991 to 1995. Amar had his music performed internationally and has received several honors for his musical work, including a 1992 premier of his clarinet quartet Conversational Impromptu at Weill Recital Hall in New York and the 1990 NGCSA Young Composers Award for Earth Songs.

Amar received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001. While at Berkeley, Amar was a researcher at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) and developed advanced software for music composition and performance, including Open Sound Edit, an advanced 3D graphical editor for sound representations and Open Sound World, a programming environment for real-time music and audio applications.

Amar remains actively involved in local electronic and experimental music in the San Francisco Bay Area, and performs regularly. His recent music involves experimentation with new sounds and sound-synthesis/processing techniques and new modes of musically expressive performance. He is also interested in the use of folk instruments and toy instruments in electro-acoustic music.