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Conceived in 1996 by Miami alumnus Srinivas Krishnan, Global Rhythm’s mission is to perform ethnic music from non-western cultures using Western instruments. The group is open to all students at Miami University with an interest in world music and has grown from just five members in its first year to include over 30 instrumentalists and Miami’s Collegiate Chorale.

In 1998, Global Rhythms began performing outside of Ohio, and since then has given over 40 tour performances at venues such as Berklee College of Music, Cornell University, Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lotus World Music Festival. To date, Global Rhythms has performed music from Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East, with a particular emphasis on both the classical and popular music of India.

In 2003, Collegiate Chorale and Global Rhythms joined Indian film composer A.R. Rahman on his Unity of Light tour of the United States, performing at major venues including New York’s Nassau Coliseum for an audience of 18,000. Rahman is often referred to as “the Indian Mozart” – having composed over 75 film scores in the past twenty years in addition to the music for the Broadway musical Bombay Dreams and a musical based on The Lord of the Rings.

The Miami University Collegiate Chorale has been the official choir of Global Rhythms since 2001. A select mixed choir of 80 undergraduate singers drawn from all majors and departments at Miami University, the Chorale performs a repertoire spanning five centuries from Bach to Stravinsky to a wide assortment of multicultural music. In March 2005 the Chorale was selected to sing for mass at services in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and the Basilica of Maria Maggiore in Rome. In 2002 the Chorale toured to New York City where they performed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and sang the National Anthem for the New York Mets. The Chorale has performed live on both the ABC and Fox Networks on both local and national broadcasts. Since the fall of 2001, the Chorale has appeared regularly with Global Rhythms.

"The music has an intrinsic beauty that has its own worth,” said Miami music professor Roger Davis, who co-directs Global Rhythms with fellow professor Ethan Sperry. With the fusion of two different cultural musical styles, Indian and Western, Global Rhythms is becoming a pioneer in the music world. “Music is a living demonstration that different people can sit down on a stage and play together,” he says. “Underneath our differences we are really similar and share certain values.”

With such enthusiastic directors and talented students, many musical performers seek out the opportunity to play with Global Rhythms. “We’ve been asked to play with several musicians including band members of Peter Gabriel,” says Davis. “El Negro Hernandez of Santana, named the best drummer of the century, comes all the way from Italy for a small fee just to play with us.”

For more information about this event, visit www.mvnu.edu/lectureartist or call (740) 397-9000, ext. 4341.

Mount Vernon Nazarene University is a private, four-year, intentionally Christian teaching university for traditional age students, graduate students and working adults. U.S. News & World Report ranks MVNU in the top 50 Best in the Midwest (Baccalaureate) institutions for the fifth year in a row. With a 400-acre main campus in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and eight additional satellite Adult and Graduate Studies sites throughout the state, MVNU emphasizes academic excellence, spiritual growth and service to community and church. MVNU offers an affordable education to more than 2,500 students from 25 states and six countries/U.S. territories.