Manu (2026): solo voice + live electronics, flexible live instruments, and projections.

Manu is an evening-length, experimental vocal-theater work for which I serve as composer, librettist, and performer, currently being developed for Beth Morrison Project’s Next: Gen, Finalist Round.

manu fuses autobiography with Hindu mythology to tell a story of survival, loss of innocence, and rebirth after institutional abuse. As composer, performer, librettist, and subject, I place myself at the center of the work as musician, survivor and diasporic artist navigating fractured identities.

The piece is structured around the Hindu flood myth of Manu, who withdraws into the forest for ten thousand years of penance, nurtures a small fish that grows into the god Brahma, and builds an ark to survive the great flood and restart the world. This myth becomes the scaffold for my own lived experience of being sent as a teenager to Red River Academy, part of the notorious WWASP network of “troubled teen” schools. Like Manu, I was stripped of my worldly possessions and community. Like Manu nurtured the fish, I turned to journaling and composition as acts of faith. And, like Manu, I emerged into a changed world, carrying the burden and possibility of beginning again.

Featuring:

Musicians: Madeline Hocking (violin), Dorothy Chan (piano), Dan Langa (producer), Chris Van Leeuwen (trumpet), Neelamjit Dhillon (tabla), Dustin Carlson (guitar), Michael Alexander (guitar), and Alice TM (guest vocals).