Baker Artist Portfolios

A multi-discipline creative force in Baltimore since hte late 90s, Sandy Asirvatham, now known artistically by her full first name, Sandhya, is poised to break nationally with her newest project, INNOCENT MONSTER. This art-rock album contains ten original songs featuring vivid lyrics over deep-pocket grooves, all tied together by Sandhya's charismatic voice and bold choices at the piao. It embodies a throwback 70s-80s-90s FM radio sensibility that perfectly suits what Rolling Stone calls our new "post-genre" era. 

A writer at Rolling Stone (India) notes that "Sandhya balances darkness and mirth" on what they call a "soaring rock album." Kenneth Silber at Splice Today says the record is "an absorbing mix of lyricism and cynicism, displaying unflappable resilience amid somber contemplation. It's laced with caustic humor...now leavened with experience, and sliced into tuneful packets." 

Sandhya's earliest successes came as an award-winning columnist for Baltimore CityPaper, later as an Emmy-wining PSA producer/writer. She got serious about music when trying to escape personal crises throug obsessive piano practice. (It worked.) Her first album, MEMOIR (2007), contained jazz-pop originals and a few standards. She was the visionary and chief composer behind MOBTOWN MOON (2013), a massive Pink Floyd homage she co-produced with singer-songwriter ellen cherry and the help of 40+ collaborators from the Baltimore region's vibrant, varied music and visual arts scenes. Evan Serpick writing for the erstwhile Baltimore CityPaper called the studio album "wildly eclectic but consistently absorbing," and the project received a Best Collaboration award from that newspaper as well as a Best Tribute Award from Baltimore Magazine that year. Critic John Lewis wrote that the project "smartly nods to Dark Side's classic status without being too reverent."

Although production of INNOCENT MONSTER was almost shut down by the global pandemic, Sandhya tuaght herself how to cut professional-level vocal tracks at home, and ended with an even better final product than expected. 

In 2021 she held a solo piano house concert in Palm Springs CA and a public concert at An die Musik in downtown Baltimore, accompanied by Mark St. Pierre on cajon and Piper Greenbaum on French horn and background vocals. She maintains an active fan group on Facebook, for whom she has begun playing one live streaming song "rehearsal" almost every weekday around lunch time. She continues to write new music and make unique interpretations of jazz and rock cover songs, and intends to put out one or two new studio recordings in 2022-2023 as time and funding permit.