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Brooklyn born and bred artist Tamar-kali (she/her) is a second-generation musician with roots in the coastal Sea Islands of South Carolina. As a composer and performer, Tamar-kali defies boundaries to craft her own unique sound and speak her lyrical truth with a supreme passion, voice and soulful intensity. In 2017, her debut film score for Dee Rees’ Oscar-nominated Mudbound garnered her the World Soundtrack Academy’s 2018 Discovery of the Year Award. Her “expressive and varied score” (Variety) has been classified by Indiewire as one of the 25 Best Film Scores of the 21st Century. Tamar-kali has been commissioned and presented by LA Opera, MOMA, Beth Morrison Projects, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Primavera Project, Catapult Opera, and more. She is the creator of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, a multi-day residency and orchestral concert event tracing the African American fight for freedom (Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City Festival 2023); and Watch Night, conceived and directed by Bill T. Jones with score by Tamar-kali and libretto by co-conceiver Marc Bamuthi Joseph (PACNYC 2023). Upcoming projects include The Swann, a chamber opera about William Dorsey Swann - a formerly enslaved gender bending denizen of our nation’s capital (currently in development); Sea Island Symphony: Red Rice, Cotton and Indigo, an orchestral love letter to her Gullah Geechee roots; and Demon Fruit Blues, a theatrical concert exploring the origin of misogyny and ‘curse of womanhood’ through movement and music.