Born in 1945 in Uganda. A composer of Indian descent who spent his childhood and youth in East Africa. By the time he arrived in the United States in 1965, he already had a thorough knowledge of Indian and African musical traditions. He studied jazz at Berklee College of Music, composition and music analysis with Robert Cogan at the New England Conservatory, and ethnomusicology (with a particular focus on the music of Asia, including Indian drumming) with Sharda Sahai at Brown University. He is currently a professor of music at the College of the Holy Cross. His work remains influenced by a wide range of the world’s musical traditions, from Tuvan throat singing and ancient Indian Vedic chant to the Balinese Gong Kebyar gamelan orchestra.
Korde has composed six large-scale music theatre works, including Chitra and Rasa, which weave the ancient traditions of South and Southeast Asia into complex, multicoloured structures. Rasa received an opera grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and its premiere took place in 1999 during the Sonic Boom Festival at the Miller Theatre in New York, performed by the Da Capo Chamber Players and the New York Virtuoso Singers. His most recent dance opera, Chitra, commissioned by Boston Musica Viva, was presented in the spring of 2003 by the Fleet Boston Celebrity Series at the Tsai Performance Center in Boston. His most recent chamber opera, Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen, commissioned by the Siemens Foundation and Boston Musica Viva, premiered in 2010 again at the Tsai Performance Center in Boston.
Close cooperation with musicians representing diverse musical traditions is one of the hallmarks of his individual creative language. His recent violin concerto Svara-Yantra, the fruit of a cooperation with violin virtuoso Joanna Kurkowicz and tabla master Samir Chatterjee, had its premiere in the autumn of 2005 in Katowice, performed by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
He has received many honours and fellowships including from the National Flute Association, Composers Inc., Fuller Foundation, Lef Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Massachusetts Council for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, Mellon Foundation, Artists Foundation, Meet the Composer, and Saint Botolph Club Foundation Award. His works have been published by the labels Spectrum, Centaur, and Neuma.
Selected works: Sonata for violin and piano (1968), Spectra for trombone and synthesized tape (1973), Constellations for saxophone quartet (1974), Tape Studies I–IV (1975–80), Chamber Concerto for ten performers (1980), Double Quartet for flute, violin, cello, piano and computer-generated tape (1982), Goldbach’s Conjecture for flute (1984, rev. for flute and computer-generated tape, 1985), Chamber Piece for Six Soloistsfor chamber ensemble (1986), Chamber Symphony (1989), Time Grids for amplified guitar and computer-generated tape (1989), Tenderness of Cranes for flute (1990), Spiral Constellations for Disklavier, percussion and interactive computer system (1991), Light for soprano (1991), Rasa, chamber opera for soprano, choir, ten actors/dancers, chamber ensemble and electronic tape (1991, rev. 1998), Kabir Songs for soprano, chamber ensemble and tape, to words by Kabir (1992), Bhima’s Journey, music theatre for four soloists, 12 actors/ dancers and chamber ensemble, after the Mahabharata (1993), When the Creation… for soprano, Balinese singer, oboe, two pianos and percussion, to words by Rabindranath Tagore (1993), The Separate Prison, jazz opera for eight soloists/actors and jazz ensemble, to words by Dare Duke (1995), Jazz Songs for jazz vocalist and chamber ensemble, to words by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes (1995), Conquistadors, chamber opera to words by Pablo Neruda (1996), The Drowned Woman of the Sky for soprano, three cellos and two percussionists, to words by Pablo Neruda (1997), Chitra, dance opera for soprano, Balinese dancer/actor/puppeteer, classical Indian dancer and chamber orchestra, to words by Rabindranath Tagore (2000), Blue Topeng for two Balinese gamelan soloists and chamber ensemble (2003), Nesting Cranes for flute and string orchestra (2004), Nesting Cranes for flute and string quartet (2004), Cranes Dancing for violin and string orchestra (2006), Svara-Yantra, violin concerto (2006), Anusvara for soprano saxophone (2006), Lalit for bansuri, harp and vibraphone (2007), Anusvara for transverse flute / alto flute (2007), Anusvarafor amplified bass flute with obligatory switch to alto flute and tanpura (2007), Songs of Ecstasy for soprano, tabla and chamber ensemble (2008), Anusvara (Second Prism) for cello (2008), Nada Ananda for guitar and chamber orchestra (2009), Lalit for flute and tabla (2009), Dream Sutra for violin and string quartet (2009), Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen, multimedia chamber opera for two sopranos, baritone and chamber ensemble (2010), Anusvara (Fourth Prism) for cello and string orchestra (2011), KA for soprano and chamber ensemble (2012), Anusvara (Sixth Prism) for soprano, violin and guitar (2012), Anusvara (Fifth Prism) for soprano and cello (2012), Lalit for cello and tabla (2012), Joy for viola and percussion (2012), Vak for violin (2017), Concerto for cello and orchestra (2019), The Conference of the Birds for soprano and chamber ensemble, after the medieval allegory by Farid ad-Din Attar (2019), Aede of the Ocean and Land, Zoom opera based on Noor Inayat Khan’s Aède (2020), 3 Rasas for String Quartet: Shringara-VeeraAaananda (2020), Conference of the Birds 2 for soprano, chamber ensemble and projections (2022), Moods of Ellington for string quartet and jazz trombone (2022), Rasa, chamber opera (2023), Evening Raga – Nocturne for violin (2023).