After engaging fusion music aficionados in Bangalore, it is Hyderabad's turn to get mesmerised in the notes of ‘Melange 2010'.
Featuring six musicians, the concert series by Seagram's 100 Pipers will bring them together on stage for the first time as part of the ongoing tour. The concert series features Nishat Khan on sitar, Trilok Gurtu on percussion, Larry Coryell on the guitar, Lili Haydn on violin, Frank Martin on keyboards and Itai Disraeli on the bass guitar.
Entertaining fare
The group promises an entertaining fare for the Hyderabad audience during their performance at the Chowmahalla Palace here October 22.
While sitar virtuoso Nishat Khan is a household name, being the torchbearer of a renowned 400-year-old musical family, Germany-based percussion maestro Trilok Gurtu has performed with the glitterati of Indian musical society: his mother-Hindustani classical singer Shobha Gurtu, Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Sultan Khan, Misra Brothers and Vikku Vinayakram, to name some.
Nihshat, whose talent has been compared with J.S. Bach (Washington Times) and Jimi Hendrix (Chicago Sun Times), has performed with some world's leading performers such as Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, John Mc Laughlin, Paco Pena and Vanessa Mae.
“In our music, there is a thought process, and there is a different kind of music,” said Mr. Khan at a pre-event interaction with the media here Thursday. “I perform with a very limited number of people, people who I admire and who would gel with my kind of music.”
True pioneer
The seniormost member of the group, Larry Coryell is one of the world's foremost guitar masters having been christened ‘a true pioneer of rock-jazz fusion' by the New York Times and ‘the Godfather of fusion' by Down Beat magazine.
“I was a product of my times. I came up in the middle of the 60s when we were approaching our respective fields with an eye on how do I change this,” he told this newspaper.
Incidentally, his first performance in India was in Hyderabad way back in 1982. Not so for North Californian Frank Martin and multi instrumentalist Itai Disraeli. “I wanted to come for many years. I hope this is the first of many times,” quipped Frank who teaches in the jazz department of University of California–Berkeley.
