Live Review: Ganavya @ The Vanguard, Sydney

Fresh from opening for the hugely popular hybrid composer, Nils Frahm, Ganavya Doraiswamy brought her ethereal presence to an intimate and intricate performance at The Vanguard in Newtown.

Stripped back to its core, the show was a quiet study in voice, breath, and reverence, with Miriam Adefris accompanying on harp. Together, they wove an atmosphere of transcendence, inviting the audience into a world where poetry and music became one.

The venue itself, with its Lynch-esque interior, provided the perfect backdrop for a night of introspective sound. Low lighting, deep shadows, and the hush of a listening crowd created a sense of weightlessness, a space where time seemed to slow. The tranquil setting converged with the stripped-back instrumentation to create something truly unique.

“On that note, since you’ve shown me that you have voices, I’m gonna ask you if you want to sing with me.” Ganavya's invitation to the audience was met with an eager hum, a call and response between her voice and Adefris’ harp. It was a moment of communion, of shared breath.

“If you see a balding South Indian man with a shiny head, he’ll assure you that you’re doing nothing wrong.” Laughter rippled through the room, grounding the performance in warmth and playfulness. It was clear that Ganavya was just as much about dismantling mysticism as she was about creating it.

The first song of the night was a poem by the Sufi-Hindu mystic Lal Ded Lalla Lalleshwari. It was a flooring rendition, capturing through transportative and meditative vocals the message behind the Kashmiri language: “I was made broken so it keeps flowing out.” Ganavya's voice, unhurried and deeply felt, seemed to embody the sentiment itself, stretching each note like a thread through time.

The second poem, by the composer Oh Raaya, was “the soundtrack of my childhood.” The soaring vocals captured the heart of the Tamil poem, which Ganavya translated: “Sometimes you’re going to learn how to fly without all your feathers.”

The performance carried an undercurrent of philosophy. “I just want to be happy, and the day that being a musician makes me miserable, I’ll walk away from it.” Yet in that moment, she was utterly present, giving everything.

She introduced the first lullaby, Never So Lonely, associating it with her father. “It tells the story of a parent saying to their child: ‘In this time of sadness, won’t you pick up the heart?’” The tenderness was palpable.

Then, shifting effortlessly, Ganavya led us into a second lullaby, Not A Burden, a song she associated with her mother, posing the question: “How can a child be a burden?”

“Very sweet, very sweet. A+. I don’t know what the grading system is in Australia.”

“It’s casual—even in the Opera House.”

Laughter again, but always with that undercurrent of sincerity. Ganavya then admitted, “I gave Miriam a setlist and now I’m going to ignore it because I am a non-disciplinary [artist].” Adefris smiled, adjusting effortlessly.

Paresparay followed, soaring and delicate. Then came the last English poem of the evening. “Again, apologies for not singing in a distant ancient language.” This piece, Land, was by a Palestinian poet. “This song always reminds me to take the lightest thread for singing.” Her voice, whisper-light, drifted over Adefris’ harp, leaving a lingering resonance in the air.

Reflecting on childhood, Ganavya recalled village life: “When we lived in a village, each of the streets had a temple at the end of them.” She sang Amansatee, a piece whose title means “dwelling place.”

She spoke of Bama Auntie, her mother’s teacher, who passed down a song about a goddess—“teaching us to swim through life.” Then, invoking the sacred architecture of India, she described the 1000 Pillar Hall In Madurai, “where sounds bounce back like voices singing with you.” The reverence in her tone turned the venue into a temple of its own.

“I think we’re coming towards the end, and then you can relieve your knees.”

In a deeply personal moment, Ganavya’s parents joined her onstage to sing of Navaratri, “or Nine Jewels.” We watched, then joined in, as they constructed these jewels in the ether. “Then we give them away to the divine mother—Lalithā—to show we don’t need anything, and by giving everything away, we become the tenth jewel.”

She paused to thank the sound engineer: “Doing sound for me is a very strange endeavour.” Then, addressing the audience again, she smiled: “We came from a world that was a little technophobic.”

The second last song was, as she put it, “a song Miriam’s never played before and that wasn’t on the setlist.” A sudden detour—an impromptu Happy Birthday for someone named Jordan. It was the kind of unexpected moment that made the night feel alive.

Then, as though saving the most haunting for last, Ganavya sang Forgive Me My. “The only way I remember something is to turn it into song.” Taken from a poem by Marcellus Williams, the piece carried the weight of impending loss. Knowing the US government was about to take his life, Williams wrote the poem in his final moments. Ganavya turned it into a prayer, a reckoning.

As the final notes faded, the silence that followed was thick, reverent. The audience, bound together by breath and melody, seemed hesitant to break it. Ganavya had done something rare—she had created a space outside of time, a moment where poetry, music, and presence converged.

Then, finally, we exhaled.