A musical collaboration that spans generations, cultures and genres. Join ARIA Award-winning Tabla player Bobby Singh and his virtuosic group of friends for an evening of Indian classical-meets-jazz, blues and beyond.
This free performance features the compositions of tabla maestro Aneesh Pradhan – communicated over voice note messages and interpreted by his disciple Bobby Singh and Sydney-based jazz legend Sandy Evans, then in turn melded into coherent pieces by a slew of virtuoso musicians. Culturally it bridges Indian classical tradition with western musical tropes of jazz, blues and beyond – with the presence of Tjupurru’s didgeribone grounding some of the compositions to the very roots of the land we call Australia.
While the music revolves around the nucleus of Bobby Singh, it also features Sydney saxophone doyen Sandy Evans, guitarist and songwriter Jeff Lang and percussionist and educator Greg Sheehan. Alongside these elder statespeople are Lara Goodridge and Shenzo Gregorio (violin and viola), The Bird’s Ben Walsh on drums, Zela Margossian on piano and didgeribone player Tjupurru. But it’s Bobby who traverses the disparate worlds of his collaborators and is able to emulsify their art into a cohesive whole. The album they have created, Sutradhaar (which literally means ‘string-holder’ but is colloquially a ‘narrator’ or ‘stage manager’) is a paean to a world of hope and the strength of collaboration across cultures, generations and borders.
