Department of Music

Hansini Bhasker is a Tamil (ethno)musicologist, multi-genre vocalist, performer-composer, and improviser from Connecticut who deploys embodied music-making and movement for socio-ecological healing and change. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2020 with a Bachelors in Music (Composition and Musicology) and certificates in Vocal Performance, Cognitive Science, Finance, and Entrepreneurship, and received her Masters in Music (Performance and Ethnomusicology) from Wesleyan University in 2025. 

 

She is a YoungArts winner in Voice whose musical practice and research bridge across Karnatak, Western classical opera and early choral repertory, French chanson, jazz, gospel, R&B, pop, musical theater, Central Asian folk, Javanese gamelan, and avant-garde experimental soundscape and extended vocal techniques. Her master's thesis, entitled "Sounding the Voice: Environmental Engagement and Cultural Construction of Vibrato" explored cross-cultural contrasts, evolutions, and interactions in the use and control of vibration, timbre variation, and pitch oscillation in vocalization. 

 

From 2025-2026, she received a Fulbright-Nehru Study/Research Award to India to conduct research examining how South Indian classical performers in Chennai, Tamil Nadu navigate relations between mind, body, ability, and self.  Her current research dwells further on questions related to performers' identity-making through interactions across physical environment, accessibility, and legal, economic, and sociocultural contexts. She is especially interested in multisensory experiences and interventions around pain and care in performance practice and audience engagement.