Big Grenadilla / Mumbai

[Ziporyn's] whole career has been about making US see and hear that music is one world. the Boston Globe Following the critically acclaimed Frog's Eye (CA21040, 2006) Big Grenadilla/Mumbai marks the second Cantaloupe Music collaboration between composer/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn and Gil Rose's Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP). It is also the second time that Evan has teamed up with world-renowned tabla player Sandeep Das a member of the Silk Road Ensemble thus forging together a non-western master musician with a premiere western orchestra. Commissioned and premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in 2006, Big Grenadilla features Evan Ziporyn on bass clarinet and is named for the wood from which clarinets are made and the big orchestra, magnifying and framing. Wanting to highlight and amplify what he likes to do best on his instrument, Evan calls the piece an attempt at ancestor worship, on two levels: The instrument dreams of it's living, rooted reality, with the orchestra playing the role of it's environs. Mumbai is a memorial to and meditation on the terrorist bombings in that city in 2008. Mumbai was commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and premiered alongside with Grammy nominated soloist Sandeep Das on May 27, 2011.