2 Indias Ensemble, a group of musicians come together to perform beautiful art. This group of artists includes Sahil Vasudeva - piano, Suhel Saeed Khan - Sitar (Dilli Gharana), Shahnawaz Khan - Sarangi (Dilli Gharana) and Makrand Sanon - Hybrid Percussion creating a variety of sounds from different instruments, leading up to a melodious harmony. Sahil Vasudeva, the creator and lead of this group, performed on a Family of Steinway Designed Piano, the Boston Grand GP 178, to create the perfect mix of classical music from different regions.
This group of artists was not a band initially. 2 Indias Ensemble lead, Sahil Vasudeva is an experimental artist. He creates music with different styles than the original ones; he takes pieces and makes them his own. He adds a touch of his style and sense of music to the piece. This time he took a Spanish artist, Issac Albeniz’s, piece, ‘Asturias’ and has been trying to learn it for a long time. He finally did, but experimentation being his speciality he couldn’t not experiment with this piece of art as well. He took this Spanish-inspired piece and turned it into something that portrays western classical and Indian classical music in a way never before seen.
Vasudeva joined Suhel Saeed Khan, Shahnawaz Khan, and Makrand Sanon who play different instruments and created a whole new version of this piece. They performed in Delhi on June 30th and now in Mumbai, at the Royal Opera House on November 18th, this year. As the dates began to come closer, Vasudeva began going into Albéniz’s repertoire, taking three months to find suitable instruments, transcribing and playing the music note for note to figure everything out. While he was doing so, he found a lot of crossovers that just the piano and sitar would not be able to do justice to it.
That’s when he decided he needed something more and chose to add other artists along with performing on the Boston Grand, which is the perfect choice to perform such a piece of art. The other members performing this repertoire had to do a lot of research to be able to play a piece like this. Suhel playing the sitar and Shahnawaz the sarangi were performing something completely different from their usual notes. Makrand a percussion player, plays a unique hybrid percussion that makes him and his music a twist to every piece. All four members’ hard work and effort are visible in their performances and the fact that they might go for more performances, now as a band.
They have already started working on incorporating jazz/progressive pieces and electronic music elements. There’s also a performance with a Spanish cellist and an album set to be recorded in 2023 for Vasudeva’s solo project. This project was a grand success not only due to the effort gone into the creation of the piece but also the kind of instruments, provided by Furtados Music, used to make magic and is a mix of two distinct schools of arts. Hope you attended the show and if not, this blog is here for you!
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