Brooklyn born and bred artist and second-generation musician with roots in the coastal Sea Islands of South Carolina.

Tamar-kali is a vocalist, performer, award winning composer and Oscar shortlisted composer of Oscar nominated and Emmy award winning films.

Whether her alt-rock power quintet or her all femme chamber ensemble, as a performer, she speaks her lyrical truth with a supreme passion and a voice that will shake your foundation and shatter your expectations with its soulful intensity.

Her debut original score for Dee Rees’ Oscar-nominated “Mudbound” received the World Soundtrack Academy’s 2018 Discovery of the Year Award and was classified by Indiewire as one of the 25 Best Film Scores of the 21st Century.

The soundtrack for her score to Josephine Decker’s ‘SHIRLEY’ was named The Guardian’s Contemporary Album of the month in June 2020.

2022 saw her debut work from multiple commissions; the LA Opera digital short, We Hold These Truths’ directed by Peabody award winner dream hampton, a solo cello piece for acclaimed cellist Matt Haimovitz as well as a return to the stage to perform ‘Melancholy Ghosts and Other Mothers’ a Beth Morrison Projects commissioned song cycle.

Watch Night, a theatrical work conceived and directed by Bill T. Jones and composed by Tamar-kali with a libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph made its world premiere November 8, 2023 as part of the long awaited Perelman Performing Arts Center’s inaugural season.

Most recently, her original score for history making Oscar nominee Rachel Morrison’s feature directorial debut The Fire Inside made the 2024 Oscars shortlist.

Current projects include a full length chamber opera inspired by William Dorsey Swann, the first person known to dub themself a “queen of drag” and Sea Island Symphony: Red Rice, Cotton and Indigo; an orchestral love letter to her Gullah Geechee roots.

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