Cycles - CD release coming soon!

Cycles is the culmination of over ten years of collaborating with Canadian composers, creating a new repertoire for tabla that combines elements of Indian classical and Western classical music. The resulting works draw their inspiration from Western and Indian music in varying degrees, and reflect the personalities and approaches of the individual composers. Cycles features new works for tabla from Canadian composers Paul Frehner, Jim Hiscott, Christien Ledroit, Nicole Lizée, and Bruno Paquet and features guest performances by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, directed by Brian Current, as well as Marie-Hélène Breault on flute, Catherine Meunier on vibraphone, and Xenia Pestova on harmonium. The CD is being released on the ombu productions label, and will be available on October 14.

The pieces on the CD are:

Elementalities, for flute, vibraphone, and tabla, by Christien Ledroit

Metal Jacket, for tabla and harmonium, by Nicole Lizée

Les arbres célestes, for tabla and pre-recorded tape, by Bruno Paquet

Shadow Play, for flute and tabla, by Jim Hiscott

Ke-Te, for solo tabla, by Paul Frehner

Trade Winds, concerto for tabla with string orchestra, by Christien Ledroit

Producing this CD has been quite a journey for me. It represents ten years of new music for tabla, and the CD project itself took over one year to complete. The chamber music pieces were recorded in September and October 2010, and the tabla concerto with the WSO was recorded in February 2011 by the CBC.

Performing Christien Ledroit's Trade Winds, concerto for tabla, with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra
Photo credit: Scott Webster, Windsor Star

Many thanks to all who collaborated with me on this special project! I will post links to purchase the CD once it becomes available.

Open House at the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal's New Maison Symphonique

This past September 8, I had the pleasure of performing with Erreur de Type 27 for the opening of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal's new symphony hall, named the Maison Symphonique de Montréal. The new hall, at Place des Arts, is a major new concert hall for Montreal. The OSM invited groups from across Quebec to come and perform for their open house event. The trio was made up of Marie-Hélène Breault on flute, Catherine Meunier on marimba and vibraphone, and myself on tabla. (Marie-Hélène and Catherine also played on my upcoming CD, Cycles!) We presented excerpts from our upcoming Musica Masala show on October 14.

Erreur de Type 27 performing at the Maison Symphonique open house

The open house ended up being a huge success - there were literally thousands of people who lined up to see the new hall. You can see some of the loooong lineups in the OSM's Facebook photos. Over the course of the day, we performed four times; three times in the main foyer, and once in the new hall. The new hall looks great. I can't really comment on the sound, as I wasn't in the audience, but we received very good feedback after our performance. We performed Christien Ledroit's Elementalities, for flute, vibraphone, and tabla; Jim Hiscott's Shadow Play for flute and tabla; and Payton MacDonald's Farmaishi in a special arrangement for flute, marimba, and tabla.

A fun fact: I used Maestro Kent Nagano's podium for my riser. It's made of very heavy hardwood (oak?) and weighs about 200 pounds! Unfortunately, no riser was available in the foyer...

Performing in the foyer.

Thanks to composer Christien Ledroit for the photos!

Santoor and tabla recital at McGill University

This past September 30, I accompanied santoor player Jonathan Voyer for a recital at Tanna Schulich Hall at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montreal. The concert was part of the Journées de la culture (Culture days) and also was in celebration of UNESCO International Music Day, which was interestingly started by the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin (himself a great lover of Indian classical music, and longtime collaborator of Pandit Ravi Shankar).

Jonathan chose to play Raag Charukeshi, which is one of my favourites on santoor (recommended listening: Pandit Shivkumar Sharma's recording of Charukeshi, with Pt. Kishan Maharaj, on the album Sympatico). The raag just seems to work so well on santoor, and creates a very special mood. Jonathan played an alap, followed by a gat in vilambit jhaptaal, madhya teentaal, and then drut teentaal.

We really had a great performance. A great hall, great audience, and great mood. This was one of those performances that just felt right. The hall was almost completely full to capacity and the audience was very enthusiastic. We even got some audible appreciation at times during the drut, which is very rare here in Montreal.

Our CD, Shanta, can be purchased from us directly, or online via iTunes and CDBaby.

2nd Global Conference on World Religions

This past September 7, Jonathan Voyer and I had the honour to perform for the Second Global Conference on World Religions, held at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal. The list of guest speakers was quite impressive. The keynote speaker was his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and he was joined by world-famous author Deepak Chopra, Professors Tariq Ramadan, Robert Thurman, Steven T. Katz and Gregory Baum.

Unfortunately, we didn't meet any of these distinguished people, but we were very happy to share our music with the very receptive attendees!

Summer Festivals with Ragleela

This past August 10, I performed with Ragleela at the Festival des Traditions du Monde de Sherbrooke. I had played this festival a few years earlier with Galitcha, and so was really looking forward to being back. This was our first performance trying out a new instrument with the group -cello. Cellist Philippe Mius d'Entremont joined the usual group of Uwe Neumann on sitar, Jean-Marc Hébert on guitar, Eric Breton on percussion, and myself on tabla.

Soundchecking with Ragleela at the Festival des Traditions du Monde de Sherbrooke

In concert at the Festival des Traditions du Monde Sherbrooke

Here comes the rain!

But, after we played our first tune, BOOM, the rain came down HARD. We quickly packed up our instruments, but were told to stay on standby in case the weather cleared up. 20 minutes later, it did, and so we were able to resume our set for another 30 minutes or so. Then right after finishing, again, the rain came pouring down and this time there was no end in sight. We scrambled to pack our instruments and put them away in the car. We were all completely soaked, but luckily no instruments were damaged.

On August 13, we headed out to the Festival Interculturel de Rawdon. Unlike the weather in Sherbrooke earlier that week, the weather was really amazing. Nothing but sun and blue skies. The festival is set at the municipal beach, right next to a peaceful lake.

Uwe playing his sansa.

After the concert, we took a few group photos in the Rawdon countryside. Here are a couple of my favourites:

 

First Annual Summer Tabla Workshop in Montreal

Some of you may remember that I hosted Gurujee, Pandit Sharda Sahai for tabla workshops in Montreal back in 2006 and 2008. Unfortunately, he isn't travelling as often as he used to, and so has stopped coming to North America for his annual workshops. This year, I decided to continue the tradition in my own small way, and organised a one-week tabla workshop at McGill University during the first week of July. Students were divided into two groups - beginner and intermediate. Each class met four times, in addition to daily group practice sessions, and two video-viewing sessions where we watched performances of instrumental music, tabla solos, and kathak dance.

We ended the workshop with a Guru Puja. Here are a few photos:

Thanks to all the students for their enthusiastic participation! Keep practicing! :)

I'm currently in the planning stages for next year's summer workshop in Montreal. Also, stay tuned for information about Gurujee's tabla workshop in London in summer 2012! It will be really special. As soon as I have any details, I will post them here.

In concert with Steve Gorn

This past July 27, I had the great pleasure of accompanying bansuri master Steve Gorn at the Espace Cercle-Carré in Old Montreal. He came up from his home in the US to spend some time with his student Alexandre Lavoie and to do some Montreal sightseeing, and so we thought it would be great to organize a small concert for him while he was here.

The Espace Cercle-Carré is a new performance space in an artists' co-op. The space is quite reverberant, and a very beautiful acoustic for Indian classical music. We performed without any amplification, in a house-concert style setup. We all really enjoyed the vibe, and hopefully I will be able to organize other Indian music concerts there in the future.

Some concert attendees posted other photos of the performance here and here.

It was a real pleasure to have Steve perform in Montreal. Hopefully he will be back again sometime soon!