Ganavya - Daughter of a Temple (Leiter Vinyl LP)

Ganavya - Daughter of a Temple | Vinyl LP - 2024 Leiter (LTR045, mixed by Nils Frahm)

• Esperanza Spalding on double bass, Vijay Iyer on piano, Immanuel Wilkins on saxophone, Shabaka Hutchings on wind instruments, and one of Wayne Shorter's final recordings, alongside sitar, mrudangam, kanjira, harp and a 30-person gathering at Houston's Moores Opera House.
• Alice Coltrane's "Om Supreme" and "Journey in Satchidananda" and John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" reimagined across four movements, each dedicated to a different figure: Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Sellars, Alice Coltrane and Ione.
• Named BBC 6 Music's Best Album of 2024, recorded at a week-long ritual gathering in 2022 and mixed by Nils Frahm at his Leiter studio in Berlin.

Ganavya Doraiswamy was born in Queens, raised in Tamil Nadu, and trained at Berklee, UCLA and Harvard before the Wall Street Journal called her one of modern music's most compelling vocalists. For Daughter of a Temple she invited over 30 artists to a ritual gathering at the Moores Opera House in Houston in 2022, not a recording session in the conventional sense but a week-long communal event that included dancers, filmmakers, a ritualist, a stage director, textile makers and the former US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo alongside the musicians. Ryan Renteria recorded it. Nils Frahm edited and mixed it at his Leiter studio in Berlin in 2024, and it was released on Leiter, Frahm's own label.

The personnel list reads like a map of contemporary jazz. Esperanza Spalding plays double bass and contributed additional production and mixing. Vijay Iyer plays piano and Immanuel Wilkins plays saxophone on "Om Supreme," Alice Coltrane's composition, which builds to a ten-minute invocation. Shabaka Hutchings plays wind instruments on "Prema Muditha." Shanta Nurullah plays sitar, Ranjani Swaminathan plays mrudangam and kanjira, and Rasika Shekar plays flute, grounding the ensemble in South Indian classical tradition. Wayne Shorter and his wife Carolina play beads and bells on "Elders Wayne and Carolina," reciting the Buddhist chant "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo." Shorter died on March 2, 2023, making this one of his final recordings. Ganavya sings, plays double bass and kalimba, and produced the album. The second half reimagines John Coltrane's A Love Supreme across four movements, each named for a different figure: the trumpeter and AACM member Wadada Leo Smith, the theatre director Peter Sellars (who speaks on his movement), Alice Coltrane, and the author Ione. This is the 2024 Leiter release (LTR045).