“The reality is, there’s plenty of East-West musical projects that are horrible,” says Rudresh Mahanthappa, expressing a sentiment open-minded listeners of global sounds are often afraid to voice.

The New York City saxophonist is introducing his own East-West musical fusion, Gamak, who he leads in a performance at New York University Abu Dhabi on Tuesday November 24.

The ensemble’s music is anything but horrible – although it is demanding.

A fiery, phenomenal improviser who was once crowned Alto Saxophonist of the Year by leading jazz magazine DownBeat, Mahanthappa’s playing is exhaustingly inventive.

Backed by a rock-influenced rhythmic section of drums, bass and electric guitar, his sax spits spiralling, jagged phrases that skirt scales drawn from both sides of the globe.

The Gamak project – realised on the 2012 album of the same name – is the latest step in the 44-year-old Indian-American’s exploration of Indian classical music.

This began during his studies at leading jazz school Berklee College of Music a quarter of a century ago, and culminated with a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Carnatic music, resulting in the ensemble Samdhi in 2011.

“Exploring Indian music was something that came out of that early-adulthood confusion – trying to understand to what degree I was American and to what degree I was Indian, and how these things can occur simultaneously, in concert, as opposed to in conflict,” he says.

Gamak is named after the term for South Indian melodic ornamentation, but Mahanthappa’s playing also seeks to examine how tunes are traditionally embellished by players of Chinese, African and Indonesian music.

“The way melody is decorated is what gives it the human quality,” he explains. “I was always fascinated by this very specific, almost-science of how this melodic ornamentation occurs. It’s not random at all, it’s very stylised. People always say: ‘You shouldn’t play the melody straight, you have to give some life to it’. Well, that’s all well and good, but how about making a larger conversation about what that actually means, and exploring how it occurs in different parts of the world.”

Mahanthappa changed direction on this year’s Bird Calls, a set of new compositions each inspired by a specific solo or tune by the alto legend Charlie Parker.

For this 16th release, the restless spirit is contemplating either recording music from children’s TV shows from around the globe, collaborating with a comedian and live video artists on a politically-motivated performance piece, or recording a collection of Michael Brecker compositions that the late, great saxophonist never had the chance to record in his lifetime.

“It’s all part of one big journey,” says Mahanthappa. “I still say: ‘I’m a professional musician’. I make albums and tour and perform and do all these things, but sometimes I think the music is just a by-product of me continuing to get myself, to understand who I am as a citizen of the world.”

• Rudresh Mahanthappa and Gamak perform at East Plaza, The Arts Centre, at NYUAD on Tuesday November 24 at 8pm. Limited free tickets available on arrival or from nyuad-artscenter.org

rgarratt@thenational.ae

source: http://www.thenational.ae / The National / Home> Arts & Life> Music / by Rob Garatt / November 23rd, 2015

Like so many of today’s most interesting jazz musicians, the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa regularly creates disparate contexts, hybrids, and concepts to develop new music. The son of Indian immigrants, he’s explored the music of the subcontinent in multiple environments: some have been explicit, such as the remarkable 2008 album Kinsmen (Pi), where he collaborated with the Indian classical-music saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath; others have been more subtle and integrated, such as the 2006 duets collection Raw Materials (Savoy) he made with pianist and fellow Indian-American Vijay Iyer. On other records he’s developed his compositions around cryptology and number theory (Codebook [Pi]), while yet another celebrated one of his mentors and musical heroes—the saxophonist Bunky Green.

His latest album is an homage to another key influence—Charlie Parker—but it’s also a rigorous compositional exercise wherein Mahanthappa isolates specific DNA from some of Bird’s most important compositions and solos to create new tunes that are, in most cases, utterly unrecognizable. Bird Calls (Act) is clever and consistently entertaining—it’s fun to tease out his conceptual acrobatics. His piece “Maybe Later” retains the rhythmic patterns of Parker’s definitive solo on “Now’s the Time” but totally changes the notes, while “Both Hands” rejiggers the melody line of Bird’s “Dexterity” by removing all of its rests, which transforms the tune into a breakneck tangle. Jazz has a long tradition of musicians writing new tunes based on the chord changes of standards, and Mahanthappa indulges in this practice only once: the lovely ballad “Sure Why Not?,” which is derived from both “Confirmation” and “Barbados,” songs that moved at much swifter tempos. The most explicit Parker quote comes on “Talin is Thinking,” which nabs a seven-note phrase from the melody of “Parker’s Mood.”

In his liner notes Mahanthappa explains his desire to pay tribute to Parker with predictable readings of his repertoire. “Imitating Parker is of no consequence to forwarding this form, but developing new perspectives upon tradition is the substance of contemporary expression,” he writes. Instead, the Mahanthappa demonstrates the lessons of the bebop patriarch through a transformation of ideas into something modern.

Ultimately, however, Mahanthappa’s exercises probably benefit him and his excellent bandmates more than the average listener, because Bird Calls stands easily on its own, without any knowledge of its conceptual underpinnings. He’s joined by his longtime bassist François Moutin, the pianist Matt Mitchell (a valuable collaborator of Tim Berne’s and Dave Douglas’s), drummer Rudy Royston (Bill Frisell, Dave Douglas), and the dazzling 20-year-old trumpeter Adam O’Farrill (son of pianist Arturo O’Farrill), and they engage fully with the compositions by matching the leader’s fire at every turn. Both on a series of five short pieces (“Bird Calls”) and the brainy reinventions, the band seizes on the opportunities offered by Mahanthappa’s flinty, jagged, multivalent writing. “Bird Calls #5,” for example, is a beautifully lyric, wandering solo from Mitchell, while “Bird Calls #3” is a fiercely slaloming alto solo by the leader.

Below you can hear the track “Chillin'”—a piece based on “Relaxin’ at Camarillo”—where fragments of the original are woven into the new piece (with a request from the composer to intersperse ideas from the Parker tune into individual improvisations as well).

Saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa pays homage to Charlie Parker his way

source:http://www.chicagoreader.com / The Chicago Reader – The Bleeder / Home> – Music – Post No Bills / by Peter Margasak / February 13th, 2015

DJ and MTV VJ Nikhil Chinappa recently invited Jay Sean to India, specially to work on the new mix under his company Submerge Music. Chinappa and Jay are working on remixing the track “Aashiq Mizaaj” from Lisa Haydon, Akshay Kumar-starrer film “The Shaukeens.”

The original track “Ashiq Mizaj” has been composed by Hard Kaur and sung by Aman Trikha. Nikhil, who is a fan of Kaur’s work wanted to remix the number ever since he heard it for the first time.

We hear that he picked Jay Sean because of the unique spin he adds to desi tracks. He wants it to be a tribute to the singer.

Apparently, Jay too has loved the song so much that he has been listening to it on loop. He even called her up to congratulate her on track.

Chinappa plans to add his own twist to the track, and hopes that Hard Kaur will love it. Let’s see whether the remix ups the energy of the original song.

source: http://www.indiawest.com / India West / Home> News> Entertainment / by Suparna Thombare, India West Staff / November 06th, 2014