Tamar-kali
Composer
Brooklyn born and bred artist Tamar-kali is a second-generation musician with roots in the coastal Sea Islands of South Carolina.
As a composer, Tamar-kali has defied boundaries to craft her own unique alternative sound. As a performer, Tamar-kali speaks her lyrical truth with a supreme passion and a voice that will shake your foundation and shatter your expectations with its soulful intensity. The pieces she composes and arranges for her string sextet and voice project: Psychochamber Ensemble, marry the classical music of her Catholic upbringing with post-punk sensibilities.
2017 marked her debut as a film score composer with Dee Rees’ Oscar-nominated Mudbound. Her “expressive and varied score” (Variety) garnered her the World Soundtrack Academy’s 2018 Discovery of the Year Award and has been classified by Indiewire as one of the 25 Best Film Scores of the 21st Century.
The soundtrack for her score to Josephine Decker’s psychological drama SHIRLEY was named The Guardian’s Contemporary Album of the month in June 2020.
2022 saw her debut work from multiple commissions; the LA Opera digital short, We Hold These Truths’ directed by Peabody award winner dream hampton, a solo cello piece Little Bear Awakens for acclaimed cellist Matt Haimovitz’ Primavera Project alongside composers Josqin des Prez and Philip Glass as well as a return to the stage to perform Melancholy Ghosts and Other Mothers a Beth Morrison Projects commissioned song cycle.
2023 heralded the release of the Catapult Opera digital short, SWANN in homage to William Dorsey Swann the first American on record to pursue legal and political action to defend the LGBTQIA community’s right to gather.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle, a concert curated and co-produced by the artist and presented by Lincoln Center featured Sea Island Symphony: Red Rice, Cotton and Indigo; an orchestral love letter to her Gullah Geechee roots.
Photo by Bas Boegaerts.