Movie Night
©2011, Aman Mahajan

REFUGE, live at BFlat, Bangalore, August 24, 2013
piano: Aman Mahajan | saxophone: Matt Littlewood | bass: Mishko M'ba | drums: Jeoraj George


REFUGE: Movie Night

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/refuge.online">REFUGE</a> is an instrumental ensemble from India that plays music drawing on jazz, classical and folk traditions from around the world.

piano: Aman Mahajan | saxophone: Matt Littlewood | bass: Mishko M'ba | drums: Jeoraj George

REFUGE: from a performance for the German Consulate, Bangalore

Your true home is in the here and the now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality, or race. Your true home is not an abstract idea. It is something you can touch and live in every moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh
11.10.1926—22.01.2022

Your True Home

response to the 2016 film 'A Death In The Gunj', by Konkona Sensharma

for Shutu (piano improvisation)

"16-bit Intel 8088 chip" 
by Charles Bukowski

with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.


credits:

Apple PowerBook G4
Charles Bukowski
Sentirenla Lucia
Aman Mahajan
Loons

ode to turkey buzzard

'Unnamed'
live at Jazzwerkstatt Graz 2018

www.amanmahajanmusic.com/solopiano

live at Jazzwerkstatt Graz

Unnamed (live)

Schizophonic is an experimental electro-acoustic trio that brings together the sounds of funk, jazz, old-school hip-hop, afrobeat and the blues in no particular proportion.

ARJUN CHANDRAN guitar interface // PRASHANTH PALLEMONI turntables // AMAN MAHAJAN keyboard interface // soundcloud.com/projectschizophonic

Wai Wai [Schizophonic, live at BFlat, Bangalore]

X. Sun Dance
celebrating life
composed in Bangalore, 2014

This is the warmest piece on the album, with a lilting melody and an infectious rhythm and chord progression, celebrating life in all its forms.

May all beings be happy.

Sun Dance

IV. Sitaphalmandi
for Charlie
composed in Boston, 2005
	
A playful theme for a dog hailing from a locality called Sitaphalmandi (literally, custard-apple market) in the composer’s hometown, Hyderabad. The first section is loosely based on the Thappankuthu folk rhythms heard all too often in South India, and the second, on a jazz waltz.

Sitaphalmandi

III. More Than You Know
giving thanks
composed in Boston and Bangalore, 2009–2019

This piece is an ode to Boston, and a celebration of learning, independence, and homes away from home. Musically, the composition is an interplay between bits of Raag Des and fragments of gospel music. 'Vande Maataram' meets 'The Star-Spangled Banner'.

More Than You Know

I. Where Is It?
invocation
composed in New Delhi, 2011

The opening ceremony; an inaugural chant. Although the form is one of a cyclic chant, the meter is odd and constantly changing.

What are you searching for? Where is it?

Where Is It?

VISITORS

Come summer and the nondescript
window is festooned with fiery
  pomegranate blossom
feasted on by sunbirds chittering
their silky blue heads away
     bent on extracting sweetness
  with fluid movements
in the searing heat

It’s a small window in time
before the rains raise the curtain
         lash cool
to fan the sweat invested
in those ripe arils
straining against their smooth hides
    unveiled in a drenched
piece of pomegranate sky

sighing for a presence
  now flown

• • •

words: Urmila Mahajan, June 2020
music: Aman Mahajan, 05.07.20

Visitors

CONSTANT

A smudge on the horizon
you took a leap of faith 

sped away in darkness 
towards the strokes of dawn

   flashing across silence

rest forever in the comfort 
  you brought home

   now that the road has drawn you 
along uncharted bends

 you ripple through the wind 
     on my mind and

  in the dust of remembrance

softly filling the old places
   that have taken on your colour

  you shine constant

• • •

Ode to a much-loved cat.
words: Urmila Mahajan, 02.08.20
music: Aman Mahajan, 15.08.20

Constant

REMEMBER

Memories crumpled like
discarded bits of paper
drift back slowly

beads of sugarcane sweat
on roadside glasses
thick as slabs of ice
on days that smell
of salty sea
and clammy winds

of roasted groundnuts crackling
alive in tired newspaper cones

healing walks on streets
flushed with gulmohar

right up to our cheeks

as we hold real time
in our hands
and speak of real things

while the winds will not return
and the smell of rain on
earth is changing

it still rains
and rains

• • •

words: Urmila Mahajan, October 2019
music: Aman Mahajan, 21.08.20
artwork from a photograph by Anubhav Arora

Remember

QUIETUDE

Alone and healing
away from bruising humanity
a transient feeling
of deep fulfilment
Sometimes love
self-destructs with its own knife
it’s a one-way trip
through the stock exchange of life
A jaded spirit
drinks at the springs of solitude
while unabated
storms brew on the fringe
of quietude

• • •

words: Urmila Mahajan, 2002
piano: Aman Mahajan, 2020

Quietude

THE CUCKOO CLOCK
(a family sketch)

Pipes and bellows whittle us
to half-hours  a pendulum
murmurs rich linden wood
moorings  through
   a home-brewed history with

stirrings  of first days at school
   split open grins on jagged new teeth
craggy lessons on bruised knees
    dog and cat kisses  mellowing
thick crusted stains  in the

decades that flow  from the
single-arched door
  attesting our faith in the way
     we balanced the weights to
become who we still are becoming

• • •

poem: 'The Cuckoo Clock' by Urmila Mahajan, July 2020
piano improvisation: Aman Mahajan, 07.09.20
amanmahajan.bandcamp.com

The Cuckoo Clock

There is a narrow
space between
the rise and fall
of a foot that can
bend your path.

A slice of uncertainty
between syllables,
chinks in a cat’s
spring, cool sweeps
amidst summer’s
sharp splinters
under an Indian elm,
respite between
raindrops that soak
you to the skin,
wedges within
happenings.

You can hear the
glowing spaces
between old
people's thoughts,
often hiding
behind their words.

What seems as
inevitable as the
spin on which
life depends,
is spiked with
hair-breadths
of unfixed
spaces
tiptoeing into the
unknown.

• • •

words: 'Spaces' by Urmila Mahajan, July 2019
music: Aman Mahajan, September 2020
image: from a photograph by Christopher Sardegna

Spaces

8.10.2020 // When I Fall In Love
solo piano treatment of 'When I Fall In Love' by Victor Young
#practicediaries

When I Fall In Love (solo piano)

Indian pianist-composer Aman Mahajan plays improvised music as a medium of exploration, expression and exchange. His solo album Refuge explores ideas of home, paying homage to inward journeys.

Aman Mahajan

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