Journeys through song
It’s unlikely that Sugata Bose’s classroom discussions begin with a serenade, but on Monday afternoon his audience needed a little musical inspiration. So in a rich tenor voice, the Harvard historian happily obliged. “I have a great passion for music,” Bose said in Radcliffe’s Agassiz Theatre, where the mood was nothing like the dreary weather outside. To the delight of members of the Silk Road Ensemble, he sang a selection of late 19th- and early 20th-century traditional Bengali songs, and explained how they might inform a new composition based on the sacred Ganges River. Bose, a native of Kolkata, India, and the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, was one of several Harvard faculty members who participated in a recent three-day residency with Silk Road, Yo-Yo Ma’s collective of international performers. The ensemble was back on campus to develop and perform new music based on some of the world’s rivers, and to...