The Tamil American artist Ganavya Doraiswamy believes in destiny. "I think things find me," she says. "I feel like things tend to find us when we need them."

It was by chance that Ganavya – who, using 'Ganavya' mononymously, blends South Asian classical and devotional traditions with spiritual jazz and ambitronica – watched a video of Sheila Chandra, from the British band Monsoon, performing her '80s New Wave hit Ever So Lonely. Ganavya didn't know the act's name, but she "memorised" the song.

"The first time I heard it, it felt like every single breath entered me and stayed there," she recalls. "Then, over time, it started growing and changing and growing and changing and very slowly, gently, the words became warm like caramel, and it started bending, and I started singing in a different way."

On one occasion, Ganavya was humming Ever So Lonely in Los Angeles, and someone recognised it as Sheila Chandra's Monsoon. She searched online and poignantly learnt that Chandra had abandoned music after being diagnosed with burning mouth syndrome.

Ganavya would reinterpret Ever So Lonely and introduce it to new listeners when, in December 2023, she made a buzz appearance at SAULT's live premiere in London, accompanied by pianist Rajna Swaminathan. "It feels like love keeps finding us, even if we're not looking," she reasons enigmatically.

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The softly-spoken Ganavya is driving somewhere in Florida, pulling over in traffic to chat. She'll soon travel to Australia as the special guest on Nils Frahm's tour, having signed to the German pianist's label LEITER for her acclaimed current album, Daughter Of A Temple.

Ganavya will play at the Perth Festival, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), the Sydney Opera House, Hobart’s Odeon Theatre and Melbourne’s Hamer Hall. "I grew up kind of touring with my family when I was young – and there are parts about it that I don't miss, but there are parts about it I do miss – and it was a silent, quiet prayer that I could return a little bit to that."

Today, she's pleased to hear about the summer temperatures. "This is a really weird thing for me to say, but one of the things I'm most excited about coming to Australia for is the warmth. We've been on the road in the deep winter for so long that all of our bodies are crying for heat."

Ganavya was born in New York, and her family subsequently relocated to Florida. Ganavya's mother intuited her musicality ('Ganavya' means "one who was born to spread music" in Sanskrit) – and she'd spend much of her childhood in Tamil Nadu, Southern India, on the pilgrimage trail. Here, Ganavya studied Carnatic vocal music, Bharatanātyam dance and the ancient Hindu narrative artform of Harikatha.

Eventually, Ganavya returned to the US to finish high school and obtain a degree in theatre and psychology. At 18, she began working in a Miami penitentiary as a counsellor, later describing the experience in a TEDx talk. But, mindful of her vocation, the multi-instrumentalist spontaneously auditioned for Berklee College Of Music and enrolled as a postgraduate student at its Valencia campus.

In Spain, Ganavya recorded her 2018 debut, Aikyam: Onnu (Harmony: One), a Tamil reimagining of jazz standards such as Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose that she self-released. Back in California, Ganavya forged connections in the jazz scene. Notably, she collaborated with Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodríguez, Quincy Jones' protégé, elevating his 2016 Tocororo.

The multidisciplinary artist has since completed a PhD in creative practice and critical inquiry at Harvard University – esperanza spalding a supervisor. Ganavya sings on spalding's 2021 Songwrights Apothecary Lab, which won a Grammy for 'Best Jazz Vocal Album'. Six years after Aikyam: Onnu, Ganavya teamed with British jazz auteur Shabaka Hutchings to deliver the meditative like the sky I've been too quiet. The LP saw her explore electronica, liaising with the likes of Floating Points as well as percussionist Carlos Niño, a co-producer on André 3000's New Blue Sun.

Ask Ganavya where she lives nowadays, and her response is typically tangential – the musician having previously "resisted" giving any inkling. "Every single time someone has written that I'm based somewhere, I think they've done it without my input," she laughs. "There's no real answer to that question. Right now, I am in my parents' house – or driving around near my parents' house."

As it happens, she is joined by Felix Grimm, Frahm's manager and her partner. The pair are in the process of scanning images Ganavya collected from her parents for an upcoming project. Tomorrow they'll fly to London. "[Grimm] just spent a few hours taking leaves off of a plant, the mehndi plant, the plant that people call 'henna' – but it's the old-school version, which is called maruthani," Ganavya shares. "[But] he just spent a while taking each leaf off so my mom can grind it and put it on my hand – which is stressing me a little bit because I need my hands to finish all the tasks I have left at home!

"So the earth keeps appearing in front of our feet as we're walking. I'm not trying to be mysterious… I just mean truly, truly I actually don't know [where home is]. The reason I'm in Florida is because we just sent some of my stuff from a storage unit in Boston to Florida. So there's no real actual answer to that, both geographically and musically. It's just the various homes kind of find us while we're travelling."

Lately, Ganavya has enjoyed Berlin – LEITER providing her with a long-desired support system. "I was looking for a label that would feel like a village," she says. "I do think I was a little naive in thinking that a label would be like a village – because I'm actually not so sure that that is reality. But I think it is my reality – which I'm grateful for." She adds, "Everyone has their feet on the ground."

Inspired by the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane (aka Swamini Turiyasangitananda), Daughter Of A Temple, too, is communal with myriad diasporic cross-exchanges – spalding intoning on the opener A Love Chant.

Remarkably, Daughter Of A Temple was cut in a week at the University Of Houston, Texas – Ganavya's mother serving food (her parents also sing on the project). Yet that timeframe doesn't include Ganavya's "preparation", she observes. "I had prayer clothes made. I fasted for six months. I prayed every day with the friends who were to come and make the album."

However, editing the sessions was a trial. "It took a year or so to even have the heart to bring that down to an hour-and-a-half." Ganavya remembers feeling "completely out of stamina." She told herself, "'I don't know if I can carry this over. [But] if the world wants me to carry it over, the love will find me.'" Luckily, Ganavya says, "it did."

Ganavya was introduced to Grimm – and Frahm's Funkhaus studio in East Berlin. "I had a teacher once who told me that it takes 10 per cent of effort to come to the 90th mark of completion, but it takes 90 per cent of the effort to move from 90 to completion. And I believe that to be true with Daughter Of A Temple." Frahm offered a fresh perspective – and Ganavya admired the LEITER fold's discipline, exactness and care with her music. "Nils spent days shortening it and tightening it and removing the excess."

Ganavya can now vibe to her own album. "I have to say this is not common for me – I tend to recoil when I have to listen to recordings of myself; something just feels strange," she admits. "[But] I can listen to Daughter Of A Temple – which is the greatest gift I think someone could have given me… Not that anything is mine. I don't profess any ownership over anything, but I get to listen to my own voice on an album and not recoil because of the effort of all of those people."

Indeed, Ganavya suggests that earlier projects sound like a "Frankensteined version" of her. "So often in recordings, it feels like they go in there and chop your life breath and stick it together in ways that they think makes sense."

Ganavya's music has so many layers, yet one could just hear it incidentally and appreciate the beauty. How crucial is it to the vocalist that people approach her work as a starting point to learn about Tamil culture and understand the message of liberation? Does it matter if they listen in isolation?

"If someone were to listen to Daughter Of A Temple, I would be at peace with it being a singular object to represent [me]," Ganavya replies. "I don't have any knowing of whether or not I'm meant to accompany that person more in life or if they should find more of my music or not. The important thing here is that there have been albums in the past where I was not comfortable with people listening to it – because I didn't think it represented. But Daughter Of A Temple does." 

In May, Ganavya will present another album, Nilam, translating as 'land' in Tamil – hence her run to a printing shop. Nilam was tracked in Berlin between live dates, Grimm again pivotal. "Felix insisted from the beginning that we had an album with some of the songs that I'd been singing. I was like, 'I don't think we have an album, I think it's disparate songs.' But I trusted him enough to just go in and record it. Nils was there, and he produced it – and they were right."

A lifelong scholar, Ganavya is contemplating further academic pursuits. "I just finished a PhD and Felix caught me scrolling one time looking at other programs," she says with mirth. "Everyone was groaning because it's not fun to be around a graduate student – or a chronic graduate student."

Ganavya fancies studying botany. "I would love to learn something that is far away from the study of sound because my last four graduate degrees were in music," she ponders. "I wonder if the answer more and more is not in language, but a quietness that's past language."

Ganavya will open for Nils Frahm at Perth Festival, QPAC, Sydney Opera House, Odeon Theatre and Hamer Hall this February and March, and will also perform headline shows in Byron Bay, Sydney and Melbourne. For more details, click here.