Anuj Bhutani, manu
Friday, May 30, 2025 | 7PM-9:30PM
Sharing the stage with Lindsey Red-tail, Tsiambwom “T” Akuchu, Paul Outlaw, DaEun Jung, and Nina Sarnelle
ABOUT manu
Manu is an evening-length, experimental vocal-theater work in-progress featuring Anuj Bhutani as composer/performer/librettist, along with a small instrumental ensemble, electronics, staging and film.
ABOUT ANUJ BHUTANI
Described as “a force multiplier with more talents than time” (PATRON Magazine), “with a special gift for taking the personal and making it universal” (Beth Morrison, Opera Wire), Anuj Bhutani is a quickly emerging composer, performer, vocalist, and producer whose “alternately celestial and dark” music (John Schaefer, WNYC New Sounds) often features visceral grooves; ethereal, meditative spaces; a combination of acoustic instruments and electronics, narrative depth, and genre-fluidity. As a first-generation Indian-American, Bhutani’s work is focused on liminal spaces, and as such is often highly interdisciplinary, engaging with theater, dance, and film while drawing on his musical background in classical, emo/screamo, ambient, singer/songwriter, and electronic music, resulting in genre- and culturally-fluid pieces that firmly situate the listener between multiple musical worlds at once.
His work has been presented by Beth Morrison Projects and LA Performance Practice, and at venues including National Sawdust, So Laboratories, the Banff Centre, Tuesdays @ Monk Space, Unwound Sound, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Oracle Egg, USC’s Visions + Voices series, and more.He’s won Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Grant, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and taken part in American Composer’s Orchestra’s Earshot, NewAm Composer’s Lab as well as residencies at Loghaven, Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Atlantic Center for the Arts, among others. His work has been commissioned or performed by Ashley Bathgate, Bent Frequency, Metropolis Ensemble, Verdant Vibes, Switch~ ensemble, Talla Rouge, and more.
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The LAX Micro Fest is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture. Los Angeles Performance Practice is also supported, in part, by The Mellon Foundation, The Perenchio Foundation, and the California Arts Council.