|
CD release available to buy
here:
world premiere recordings of Shirish Korde's Nada-Ananda and Nigel
Osborne's
The Birth of Naciketas.
Hear samples from the new CD
here, live performances on
YouTube.
Performance and CD reviews:
here
Check out Simon's latest
Indian music project Svara-Kanti's new CD Rakshasa
here
In brief.....
Award winning guitarist
Simon Thacker
leads unique East/West group The Nava Rasa Ensemble
to perform powerful and innovative
new music exploring the meeting of Asian and Western
cultures, with major works by an Indian composer who
has forged a compelling and distinctive voice in the West
with his native music as a basis, and a great Western
composer profoundly influenced by
Indian music.
Simon Thacker & The Nava Rasa Ensemble
features.....
nine musicians of the highest calibre
representing three continents: virtuoso
classical
guitarist Simon Thacker, Carnatic (South Indian) violinist Jyotsna Srikanth,
Hindustani (North Indian) tabla master Sarvar Sabri, Scotland’s leading string quartet the
Edinburgh Quartet, Brazilian bass dynamo Mario Caribé and
renowned multi-percussionist Iain Sandilands.
The music.....
The Nava Rasa Ensemble
gave ten concerts across the UK in late 2009 as part of a
Scottish Arts Council Tune Up tour with PRS
Foundation support. They premiered two major new
commissions: by Shirish Korde, an Indian composer born in
Uganda and based in Boston, USA, whose music is an authentic
presentation of his thorough Indian, Western classical and
jazz training melded with other world musics; and the UK's
Nigel Osborne, who is renowned for effortlessly
incorporating musicians from non Western traditions into
large scale works. Nigel has also pioneered the use of music
in therapy and rehabilitation for children who are victims
of conflict, particularly in the Balkans and Middle East.
Shirish's Nada
Ananda ["the joy of sound"] concerto for guitar
and chamber ensemble, is in three movements. The first
movement is in the style of a North Indian Alap and
the guitar writing the explores the expressive possibilities
and colours of the instrument, combining the ornamentations
and figurations of the sitar with the timbre of the
classical guitar. The first and the second movement are
based on the raga Lalit which, according to Indian
music theory, is generally played at daybreak. The third
movement, Joy, sees extended cadenzas for the guitar,
Indian violin and tabla lead to an explosive climax for the
whole ensemble.
Nigel's The Birth of
Naciketas for guitar concertante is based on an
episode in the Upanishads where Naciketa’s mother dies in
childbirth and his father makes a bargain with Death to save
his son’s life. The work is based on the ten thaats,
or scale patterns, which are considered by many to have been
the forerunners of the raags of Indian classical
music. The piece's ten sections correspond to the ten
thaats in a 24-hour cycle related to the times of day
associated with the scale patterns. These ten sections fall
into five main movements. The Birth of Naciketas
continues Nigel's search for an Indian classical modernism.
|
