Join us for our Livestream Series featuring Aakash Mittal (Awaz Trio). We are grateful to The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts for their support to make these programs available for free but donations are welcome to support the artists directly.

Presented in collaboration with the #KenCenCultureCaucus

Watch live on FB @kennedycenter or @districtofraga
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Or on YouTube

The Awaz Trio’s debut project Nocturne offers listeners a reimagining of the night. The music places the density and sonic collisions of urban India alongside the meditations of a world at rest, night terrors conjured by the imagination, and the slow cadence of blue light melting into darkness. Comprised of mridangam artist Rajna Swaminathan, guitarist Miles Okazaki and saxophonist Aakash Mittal, the trio has performed at such notable venues as The David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Shastra Festival at Le Poission Rouge (New York City), National Sawdust (Brooklyn), Dazzle Jazz Club in Denver, Colorado, The American Center in Kolkata, India and The Walden School Concert series in Dublin, New Hampshire. In 2014 the trio conducted a residency in northern Colorado that included workshops in public schools and state universities. The trio’s artistic mission is to create and present new work that explores the concept of Awaz, a Hindi-Urdu word that changes meaning between sound, noise, and voice depending on the context. Through adventurous programming and community engagement, Awaz Trio offers a unique perspective on cultural hybridity that supports human equity and a universal creative spirit.

Hailed as “A fiery alto saxophonist and prolific composer” by the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Aakash Mittal is sculpting a dynamic voice that mines the intersection of improvisation, composition, sonified movement, and noise. The colorful dissonances, meditative silences, and angular rhythms that emerge invite the listener to enter a sonic landscape. Mittal’s work explores universal designs while being rooted in both South Asian and American musical traditions. His latest project is a series of nocturnes written for his Awaz Trio that abstract and deconstruct five Hindustani evening and night ragas.