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Zakir Hussain to perform with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer

This will follow after the Giinka Ruslan and Ludmila overture and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto the same evening.

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When & Where: February 22, Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point

The Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) has a series of performances this month in Mumbai as well as in Muscat, Oman. But the highlight is the finale performance on February 22 — the India premier of Melody of Rhythm — three movement jazz-influenced concerto with Bela Fleck on the banjo, Edgar Meyer on double bass and Zakir Hussain on tabla — some of the world’s top soloists in their respective fields. This will follow after the Giinka Ruslan and Ludmila overture and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto the same evening.

Bela, who has performed with Edgar and Zakir before, is looking forward to performing with SOI for the first time. “The concerto is equally inspired by classical music, Indian music, bluegrass and jazz music. We wanted to avoid sounding like anyone else in the world, and that seemed like a distinct possibility, considering the diverse make up of the group,” he says. “It is exciting to bring our concerto to Indian audiences. I see it as a hybrid work that is a fusion of our different ways of understanding and playing music,’ Edgar adds, who has known Bela for 30 years. He says growing up he had a friend who had an Indian father, so he often heard Indian music, both classical as well as folk songs.  “I loved the music, though I barely know the basic facts, but Zakir is a remarkable bridge, helping me understand elements of it, in terms that are more familiar to me.”

This piece came together when Bela and Edgar were invited to write a new concerto to celebrate the opening of a new concert hall in Nashville, Tennessee where they both live. “We invited Zakir to join us and all three of us composed the piece. We enjoyed the experience enough to want to play together more and explore further ideas together. A word for what we have created is ‘blend’, as in blending musics together. The truth is we all try to play and write what we hear inside our heads, and attempt to be as true to that as possible,” says Bela.

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