A musical potpourri

They are a mix of jazz, Indian and western classical and folk music, a mix of Indian and American artistes, and their instrumental music brings to the table a very original sound.

Aditya Balani and group, a student band of Berklee College of Music, Boston, will bring their colourful musical style to India.
Aditya Balani, member of group Advaita, who is studying in his last year at the college, is excited to bring forth the music he has written with the other students during his term at the college. “I have gone one step further in terms of learning from my early Advaita days. I have grown and I have learnt to play the guitar like the sarod and experimented a lot. It’s also a great experience to play with artistes who come from different cultural and musical backgrounds as one band,” says Aditya.

The other band members also come from equally different backgrounds — pianist Sharik Hasan who is an Indian-American plays mainly jazz, Aaron Bahr is a trumpet player from California, American bass player Will Cafaro and Aditya’s brother Tarun Balani is on drums and percussion.

This eclectic mix has composed many original songs and their instrumental performances will include songs like Arm Force which is a western jazz number and Prarthna which has Indian classical influences. “In India people don’t really get into music which has no words. They can’t really digest that there is no lead singer in the band. But I think once they hear the music, they’ll appreciate it,” says Aditya.

The band is slated to perform at seven venues in seven days across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Aditya is positive that even after he moves out of the school, he will continue to perform with his members. “We plan to do a US or a UK tour later this year,” he says. In fact, the school wants to get more talents from India to study with them and will hold workshops and auditions in some of the major cities where students can get selected to study music in the college. Since out of 12 to 15,000 who apply each year only about 4,500 get admitted, this is a great opportunity for Indian artistes to follow in Aditya’s footsteps.