Triple Canopy is pleased to present the American debut of “Kashmir,” a musical composition by the ensemble Dawn of Midi with a film by Prashant Bhargava. “Kashmir,” which was commissioned by Triple Canopy with the support of Chamber Music America, charts the relationships between trauma, memory, and technology through the prism of the conflict over the region of Kashmir. The concert will take place at Roulette in downtown Brooklyn on May 30, with performances at 8:00 and 9:30.

Dawn of Midi consists of Qasim Naqvi (percussion), Aakaash Israni (contrabass), and Amino Belyamani (piano), and melds free jazz, minimalism, and musique concrète. In four movements, through the modulation of a single melodic figure, “Kashmir” evokes the life cycle of a piece of information: inception, dissemination, reception, decay. This melodic figure—a bit of basic data modulated and warped by the accumulation of information—serves as the nucleus of “Kashmir.” As the film navigates the streets of Srinagar Kashmir and the proliferation of images of the conflict, the music shifts from distinct, mechanical patterns to billowing overtones anchored by propulsive rhythms, essaying to describe the course of history as experienced in the daily lives and memories of residents and their technological mediations.

“Kashmir” will be performed worldwide in 2012 and featured on Dawn of Midi’s second album, to be released by the venerable Thirsty Ear label later this year. Click here to view a trailer for “Kashmir,” here to download Dawn of Midi’s recent live EP, and here to listen to a recent set of recordings posted as a podcast by Triple Canopy.

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Dawn of Midi released its debut album First (Accretions) in 2010 to widespread critical acclaim. The ensemble has since been featured in Time Out New York, the Chicago Reader, The Wire, and DownBeat Magazine. Dawn of Midi has recently performed at Le Poisson Rouge, the Vision Festival, the Stone, Issue Project Room, and Iridium in New York and at concert halls and festivals around the world, including Gasteig Black Box in Munich, Germany, the Yokohama Improvised Music Festival in Japan, and the Serralves Foundation Documente-se! Festival in Porto, Portugal.

Prashant Bhargava is a film director and designer. His latest feature film, Patang, a family drama set against the annual kite festival in Ahmedabad, India, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011. His short film Sangam premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004; it garnered several awards and distinctions and has been broadcast on the Sundance Channel and PBS. Bhargava is the recipient of a Copeland Fellowship from Amherst College and a Computer Arts Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

“Kashmir” is produced and presented by Triple Canopy, with the support of a Presenting Jazz grant from Chamber Music America and the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC); the New York Foundation for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts’s Strategic Opportunity Stipends Program, administered by Garrison Art Center.