Simon Thacker & the Nava Rasa Ensemble

 

 

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CD release in mid 2010, Shirish Korde's Nada Ananda and Nigel Osborne's The Birth of Nacitekas, join the mailing list for the latest CD and tour info.

 

Hear samples on Myspace, watch/listen on YouTube.

 

 

Reviews: Scotsman here, Guardian here, Sound Festival here and Eden Court 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 Naciteka for guitar concertante is based on an episode in the Upanishads where Naciteka’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 Naciteka continues Nigel's search for an Indian classical modernism.
 

Award winning guitarist Simon Thacker

 

Carnatic violin virtuoso Jyotsna Srikanth

 

 

 

Tabla master Sarvar Sabri

 

 

 

Indian composer Shirish Korde

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