ground / terre : In Concert with Xenia Pestova

This past February 15, Xenia Pestova and I presented the inaugural concert of our new duo at the Chapelle Historique du Bon Pasteur, as part of the Innovations in Concert series. The concert, titled ground / terre combined practices of North Indian classical music and new music. Our goal was to create an intimate, embodied experience, deeply influenced by the warmth and intimacy of Indian music. The performance included commissioned work, improvisations, and traditional music.

Innovations in Concert recorded this short promo video, where we discussed the concepts behind the event.

The idea for the duo began when we collaborated for the recording of Nicole Lizée's Metal Jacket, for tabla and harmonium, for my album, Cycles. Xenia has done a lot of work with toy piano, and I thought that since both the harmonium and toy piano are played seated on the ground, that, in additional to their complementary sonic palettes, they would work really well with tabla.

The programme included the world premieres of The Migration of Their Materials, for toy piano and tabla, by Tina Pearson and Something to Say, by Tawnie Olson. Migration combines composed and improvised aspects, and has us focus on our breathing to set the pacing. I play tabla, with some extended techniques, while Xenia plays toy piano, in addition to her voice and the use of combs to imitate bird sounds. Something to Say is a provocative piece for tabla and fixed media. In it, the tabla plays English text, much like how the tabla plays Sanskrit and Hindi in traditional bol paran compositions. Here, the bols are in English, and I try as best as possible to have the tabla 'speak' the words. (It's the words themselves that are provocative...)

We also performed the piece that started it all, Nicole Lizee's Metal Jacket, for harmonium and tabla (one baya and 4 dahinas!); a duo improvisation, which we named terre, making use of all our instruments; and I played a traditional tabla solo in Teentaal, accompanied by Xenia on harmonium. Xenia also played some solos to round out the programme: Three Liturgies by Carlos D. Perales, Gothic, by Ed Bennett, Sonata in D minor K10, by Domenico Scarlatti, and Étude d’après Scarlatti, by Patricia Alessandrini.

Before the concert, I took some shots of our beautiful setup, while Xenia was practicing:

And here are some concert photos by Nick Hyatt of Innovations in Concert:

Performing Nicole Lizée's Metal Jacket

With composer Tawnie Olson

This concert was just the first of many to come. There will certainly be more tabla + harmonium + toy piano coming your way!

Mini Connecticut Tour

A couple of weeks after returning from Bangor, I headed out on a small tour of Connecticut, centred around New Haven. Many thanks to composer Tawnie Olson, without whom this tour would not have been possible.

The first stop was the Educational Center for the Arts, in New Haven, where I presented a workshop on North Indian rhythm, followed by a lecture/recital on tabla in new music. I spoke about some of the existing repertoire and issues of notation, and performed a few pieces, including the US premiere of Tawnie Olson's provocative new piece, Something to Say, for tabla and fixed media.

The next day, we were off to The Hartt School, at the University of Hartford, where I presented a tabla masterclass for the percussion students, hosted by Prof. Benjamin Toth.

The tour wrapped up with a lecture at Yale, organized by Reena Esmail and the Yale Raga Society.

Thank you to Caroline Tabah for the photos!

Short Tabla Residency in Bangor, Wales

This past March, I was invited to perform a tabla recital in Pontio's Music@Bangor series, in Bangor, Wales, UK. I was in residence at Bangor University for a few days, where I rehearsed with local musicians Andrew Woolley and Josephine Wilkin in preparation for the recital. I also gave tabla workshops at the Pontio shop, at Bangor University, and at Ysgol Friars school.

I have to say that Bangor is a beautiful city (feels more like a town), with amazing mountain and coastal views. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming, and my time there just flew by.

My first activity was an Indian rhythm workshop at the Bangor University School of Music. My goal here was to rhythmically challenge the students, and to provide them with some strategies and solutions for approaching complex rhythm. All using concepts from tabla, of course.

I also gave a 'Taste of Tabla' demonstration at the Pontio shop. The shop is Pontio's publicly accessible office space, on Bangor's high street. The shop will often host small, intimate events, as a way of publicizing upcoming concerts, and as a way for performers and audience to interact. It's a great idea, that more arts organizations should imitate.

For the tabla recital, I performed a number of works for tabla by Canadian and American composers. As I typically do, I opened the recital with a traditional tabla solo in Teentaal, as a way of showing the tabla in its traditional setting, and showing the depth and beauty of the repertoire. Something different this time around was the accompaniment, since no harmonium was available locally, I was accompanied by Andrew Woolley on an old electric organ! In the context of this concert of new music, it worked quite well. I then followed with Bruno Paquet's Les arbres célestes, for tabla and fixed media, inspired by Quebec's ice storm of 1998, and then Payton MacDonald's Alap, for solo tabla.

The second half began with Paul Frehner's Ke-Te for solo tabla, followed by the UK premieres of my composition, Bol, which is based on traditional bol paran compositions, and Tawnie Olson's provocative new piece, Something to Say, for tabla and fixed media. The concert concluded with Jim Hiscott's Shadow Play, for which I was joined by talented flautist, Josephine Wilkin.

On my last day, I gave a second 'Taste of Tabla' workshop, for a small group of very enthusiastic music students at Ysgol Friars high school. They had an excellent sense of time, and clapped taal quite expertly!

Many thanks to Xenia Pestova and Pontio for having invited me to Bangor. I hope to return soon!

Also, special thanks to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its financial support.

Thank you to Caroline Tabah for the photos! For additional photos, please visit the Facebook album.

Fourth Annual Summer Tabla Workshop

This year's intensive summer tabla workshop took place from June 23 through to June 29 at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. There were students who came from as far away as Ottawa, New York, Michigan, and Massachusetts. A big thank you to this year's wonderful participants, who made it such an enjoyable week!

As always, there were group classes, daily group practice sessions, listening/video sessions, and we ended with a touching Guru Puja. A few of the students got together to make malas (flower garlands), and all brought fruits and sweets for the puja. We talked about the history of the Benares gharana as I introduced the participants to the legendary artists that make up Guruji's family tree. It was really nice having everyone pay homage to Guruji and his family, and I think that everyone really enjoyed the cultural experience. It's so important to honour our teachers, and the rich history of the gharana.

The week just flew by; I can't believe it's over already. Already thinking about next year, which will be the fifth edition!

Thanks to Caroline for the photos! For more photos, please visit the Facebook album.

CD Launch of Deepchandi bleu, Ragleela's New Album

In the making for over a year, Ragleela's new CD, Deepchandi bleu, is finally ready for release! While the in-store and online release will actually take place some time in January, the band played a couple of pre-release concerts to celebrate the album's arrival. The first took place on November 27 in Val David, and the second was at the Sala Rossa in Montreal, on December 11. At both occasions, we performed all the tunes of the CD to a packed house. We couldn't have hoped for a better turnout!

For the Val David show, we played as a quartet with Uwe Neumann on sitar, Jean-Marc Hébert on guitar, Guillaume Bourque on clarinet, and with myself on tabla. At the Sala Rossa, we were joined by Cedric Dind-Lavoie on bass. Here are some photos:

Really looking forward to the online and in-store release. Soon! In the meantime, there are some short samples here: https://soundcloud.com/sitaruwe and there are some more photos posted on Facebook, here.

A week after the Montreal launch, we also played a concert in the Parc des Compagnons Saint-Laurent, on the Montreal Plateau. It was quite a bizarre experience, playing in this heated cabin, with the audience freezing outside, huddled around a fire (which was quite far from the stage). Since we were separated from the audience by these plexiglass windows, we couldn't hear the audience's applause. The feeling was similar to playing in a recording studio; we could hear each other just fine, but no connection with the audience, unfortunately, except for through our microphones. Strange, but fun nonetheless!

Thanks to Caroline Tabah for the photos!

The Return of the Attar Project

You may have noticed that since the release of The Road Ahead, and a few launch concerts in the Toronto area, the Attar Project has unfortunately been somewhat quiet. Parmela (Attariwala; violinist) was completing work on her PhD, and so had limited time available for performing. Now that she has completed her PhD (congrats!), we're back in action! Last Wednesday, we performed a concert of Canadian works for violin and tabla at the Espace Cercle Carré in Old Montreal.

First on the program was Paul Frehner's Oracle, composed for violin with congas and bongos, which I'm not sure the piece has actually ever been played on! When I first heard the piece premiered by violinist Nadia Francavilla, with D'Arcy Gray on percussion, D'Arcy played the piece on frame drum. That's what gave me the idea that the piece might work well on tabla, and it does! It's a high energy, technically difficult piece (especially the violin part), which works really nicely as an overture of sorts.

Next was Meiro Stamm's The Melody of Rhythm. This piece combines aspects of Mozart's style, with North Indian tabla drumming vocabulary. Yes; Mozart and tabla! The multi-movement work presents variations on the principal theme, through varying time signatures - 2, 3, 5, and 7. We then followed this with Nicole Rampersaud's The Road Ahead... which is principally improvised, via conceptual instructions and fixed structure with certain melodic and harmonic motives being specified by the composer.

We ended the first half with Christien Ledroit's Never the Twain Shall Meet, for violin, tabla, and fixed media (pre-recorded electronics). The composer's alter-ego as a punk guitarist is certainly evident in this piece, as kaida-palta in Jhaptaal are accompanied by distorted guitars and other processed sounds. A nice way to end the first half with a bang! Coincidentally, all the pieces in the first part appear on our CD, The Road Ahead.

Parmela opened the second half with her solo dance piece, Frank, in which she dances while playing the violin, accompanied by a very subtle, eerie backing track of bowed temple bowls and crotales. Her movements are slow and deliberate, swaying back and forth like a blade of grass.

I then followed with a short tabla solo in Teentaal, perhaps around 10 minutes long. I opened with uthaan, and played a famous Benarsi bant through subdivisions of 4-5-6-7-8, and then into a rela. I concluded with a few of my favourite tukras. I'm definitely looking forward to playing a more extended solo, hopefully some time soon!

We ended the concert with the now classic LA, by Robert Rosen. Fortunately for us, Robert now lives in Ottawa, and so was able to attend the concert. It's always a pleasure to have one of the composers in the audience, and especially one so enthusiastic about our performance of his music! 

Looking forward to the next concert!

Thanks to Caroline for the photos!

Elsiane at the Cabaret du Mile End

This past Saturday, September 7, I had the great pleasure of playing with one of my favourite bands, Elsiane, at the Cabaret du Mile End in Montreal. Elsiane is made up of Elsieanne Caplette, who is an amazingly talented singer and composer, and drummer Stephane Sotto, who has a super-solid groove, and loads of serious creativity in his playing. I highly recommend checking out their website, and having a listen to their two albums.

I was invited to be the opening act, and then later to play with the band as a guest musician. Other guests were violinist Stéphanie Caplette, oboist Annick Beauvais, and bassist Patrice Agbokou.

For the opening tabla set, I wanted to do something completely different from my usual tabla solos, and something that would fit with the Elsiane sound. Elsieanne generously composed two amazing backing tracks for my opening tabla set. The first was an elaborately textured drone, over which I played introductory materials, including Benarsi theka, followed by angrusthana. The second track had a drum groove in a medium 12-beat cycle, which I matched with an improvisation in Ektaal. This then transitioned into a duet with Stephane, which we had great fun in creating and in performing! We were eventually joined by Elsieanne and her quijada (a percussion instrument made of a donkey's jaw; the ancestor of the modern vibraslap), and began the Elsiane portion of the show with their song, Paranoia. I got a serious baya workout with the groove that we worked out for this tune, which has got to be one of my favourites that we collaborated on.

Tabla solo!

Elsieanne

Stephane 

Stéphanie, Annick, Elsieanne, Stephane, Shawn

I re-joined the band at different points in the set to play tabla on Distance, Underhelped, and In the Shadows. The tabla fits their music so well, so naturally. I'm sincerely looking forward to more collaborations with the band in the near future!

I was really impressed with how dedicated Elsieanne and Stephane are to their music, and the incredible team that they work with. Rob Heaney making everything sound so good, amazing lighting and stage design by Karine Gauthier, and also people helping out with hair and makeup (for those with hair, hahah!). When Elsiane puts on a show, it's not just a concert; it's an experience.

Thanks to Caroline for the photos!