Upanishads

Upanishads’ (Debashis Sinha)creative output spans a broad range of genres and media, from solo audiovisual performance projects on the concert stage to the rich sonic space between your headphones.  Driven by a deep commitment to the primacy of sound in his creative practice, Sinha has developed his artistic voice by weaving together his own experience as a 2nd generation south Asian Canadian, his training with master drummers from various world music traditions, a love of electronic and electroacoustic music and technology, and a desire to transcend the traditional expectations of how these streams might intersect and interact.   

The source material Sinha uses is put to various tasks, from pieces that explore and abstract his cultural heritage and experience, to works that result from a directed focus on distilling the elements of his sources into their component parts of light and sound. The wide range of audio, video and audiovisual works and performances, while varying in concept and content, are nonetheless a result of an artist with a fierce desire to expand the notions of what it means to express and be influenced by a life in/between cultures. He has appeared as a solo artist at the Sound Symposium, ORF Kunstradio, Deutschlandradio Kultur, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Madrid Abierto, MUTEK, the Guelph Jazz Festival, Radio National España, and the International Symposium on Electronic Art, to name a few, and as a member of various musical ensembles across the country and internationally.

Parallel to his solo sound work, Sinha maintains a robust presence in the theatre world, winning 2 Dora awards for Sound Design, a Toronto Theatre Critics Award, and other Dora nominations and awards as company member for other Toronto area theatre works. Companies Sinha has worked with include Soulpepper Theatre Company, Peggy Baker, The Stratford Festival, inDance, Tribal Crackling Wind, Volcano Theatre, and others.