Where does the name “ORKA-M” come from?
ORKA is an Icelandic term meaning Energy/life force and is the title of Mehta’s first commercially produced and distributed audio CD released by Hat Hut Records, Switzerland in 1998. The added “M” in “ORKA-M” is the variable that allows for multiple associations such as Music, Magic and Mystery.

What is the background of the idea of the Institute?
In 1991—1992 Mehta spent 6 months in South India, collaborating with Carnatic musicians and becoming increasingly inspired by the innovative aspects of Carnatic music. At the time, it became apparent to Mehta that there was no infrastructure for “avant-garde” music in India, that is, no platform for serious musical experimentation, a direction he had been following in his own work for several years. His initial idea of an innovative music institute based in India soon evolved. In 1992 the time was not yet ripe for pursuing such an ambitious endeavor, however, especially when India was not yet the economic power that it has now become. He consequently became increasingly musically active in Europe, living there for 14 years. He was first based in Amsterdam and then in Berlin, where he continued his musical work performing on his self-designed hybrid trumpets and developed his interdisciplinary compositional system inspired by choreography, architecture, and mathematics — a system that has been the basis of all his recent compositional work and of the prints that are currently for sale.

Applying (and later receiving) for the Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowship Award from the American institute of Indian Studies on Mehta’s project “innovative Music meetings: Creative Collaborations with Carnatic Music” under the guidance of his friend -the eminent Carnatic Vocalist Aruna Sairam as well as the concert in which he performed with the great contemporary cellist Rohan de Saram in tribute to Mr. de Saram’s receiving an honorary doctorate, which took place in Colombo, Sri Lanka on December 22, 2004 (incidentally, days before the Asian tsunami hit the region!) revived Mehta’s musical activities on the Indian sub-continent and allowed him to return to his vision of a pioneering innovative music platform in India. Mehta and his family subsequently moved to Chennai to fulfill his Senior Fellowship award form 2005-2006. During this extremely productive period Mehta expanded into the hybrid drawing-paintings and his music-artworks began to get exhibited in major modern indian art galleries such as Nature Morte, Delhi, and Apparao galleries, Chennai. It was during this period in Chennai where the idea of ORKA-M: International Institute of Innovative Music was conceived.
After nearly 3 years in Mumbai, ORKA-M shifted its Asia-Pacific focus in April 2009 and has had its operating base in Singapore since then.