March is Women's History Month, and with that in mind, Voices of Ascension would like to take this month to celebrate the women composers we've performed over the years. This week, we celebrate Indian-American composer and vocalist Kamala Sankaram, who composed "The First View" for last October's Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space. Kamala is widely known for her experimental, tech-influenced operas, which includes a 10-hour opera composed for the trees at Prospect Park, a techno-opera featuring a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers, and the world's first virtual reality opera. She is also the leader of Bombay Rickey, an award-winning, operatic, Bollywood surf ensemble, and has a PhD in cognitive psychology from the New School.

In "The First View," Sankaram sets the words of Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-American woman to go to space, to music. Describing her first view of the Earth from space, Chawla's words are both a balm and a warning - while she describes the view as "almost like a storybook," she also describes man's destructive influence over the Earth in the form of fires and pollution, and warns that we need to look at the bigger picture. Sankaram's music keeps this duality in mind - the first view is dreamy and pulsing with energy, while the destruction is urgent and discordant, like a siren rushing by. By the end, the trio sings "we should take time to look at the big picture" over stunning images of the Earth from above. It is a stirring moment, one that is pleading for the sake of humanity's survival, yet Sankaram's lilting take highlights the uncritical nature of Chalwa's plea. It's not that we need to take the time, it's that we should take the time. However, there is a depressing irony in the lack of urgency of her plea: in 2003, Kalpana Chalwa was one of seven crew members on the Space Shuttle Columbia who died upon re-entry in the Earth's atmosphere as the Shuttle disintegrated. While Chalwa's time on Earth came to a premature end, she left behind a timeless message on how we should spend the time we have.

Kamala SANKARAM “The First View” from Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space

TRIO TRIUMPHATRIX
Lindsay Kesselman, soprano
Hai-Ting Chinn, mezzo-soprano
Kirsten Sollek, contralto

Video by Hai-Tin Chinn
Kevin Noe, Recording and Mixing Engineer
Matthew Schickele, live performance Videographer
Elena Mannes, Consulting Director (Visual Media)
James Tunick, Video Editor and Researcher

Credit and thanks to NASA for extensive video footage.

The singers in this performance are represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO.