Education
Rutgers University.
Rutgers University.
She has received equal critical and commercial acclaim earning her the reputation of a "vocal gymnast" traversing effortlessly between cultures, genres, languages and sounds. Suman works between and across music, performance art, theatre and film She was awarded the Google-INK Trailblazer’s Grant 2014 towards developing a multimedia opera integrating Tamil folk music She is acting in her debut feature film Ajeeb Aashiq by award winning filmmaker Natasha Mendonca which will premiere internationally in 2016.
Sridhar was brought up in Chembur, Mumbai where she did her early schooling at Saint Anthony"s Girls High School, Chembur.
There was Indian classical music in her family, as her father played the tabla and harmonium, while her mother had trained under noted classical singer, Prabha Atre. Her family shifted to New Jersey when she was 14.
Here her early musical influences were Busta Rhymes and Lauryn Hill. Suman earned an undergraduate degree in Western Music and Gender Studies from Rutgers University, New Jersey, United States of America. Her background ranges from singing in classical choirs to jazz and contemporary ensembles and musical theatre in the New York City area.
In 2008, Suman Sridhar and Jeet Thayil co-founded Sridhar/Thayil, the lyrical post-popular music duo which Rolling Stone magazine acclaimed as "redefining indie music in India." Their studio album Doctor of Sacred Theology was released in 2012.
The duo is known for "their cabaret-like attitude and improvisational chaos on stage."
Suman"s original theatre productions as writer-co-director-performer include Yoni Ki Baat (South Asian Women"s Collective, United States of America, 2003) and The Flying Wallas: Opera Noir (Prithvi Theatre Festival, India 2009). Her performance art and sound design works include Between The Waves by Tejal Shah (dOCUMENTA 13, Germany 2012), The Kochi Intervention (Kochi Biennale 2014) and Transformation 19124 (Flying Kite, Philadelphia 2012) amongst others In its 2014 listing of "25 Greatest Indian Rock Songs of the last 25 Years", "Rolling Stone India" featured Punk Bhajan (Doctor of Sacred Theology, 2012) – Sridhar/Thayil.