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Sat. 02.02. 7:45 PM : This Is Not Fusion (India/USA)
with guest Brian Melvin (Drums) This Is Not Fusion
This Is Not Fusion is primarily Amit Chaudhuri’s brainchild. Amit Chaudhuri is one of India's leading novelists ('one of his generation's best writers', the Guardian; 'one of the most talented and versatile writers of his generation', the Village Voice), and has won several international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Society of Authors' Encore Prize, the Government of India's Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. At present, he is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He is also a performing vocalist in the Indian classical tradition, and has recordings and CDs from HMV India.
For the last two years, he embarked on a conceptual experiment in music, bringing together the Indian raga with the blues, rock, and jazz; this has travelled widely in India and Europe, and has been performed in, among other places, Berlin, the theaterschauspiele, Frankfurt, the Palais de Bozar, Brussels, the Lille 3000 Festival, and the British Museum, London. The CD, This Is Not Fusion, was brought out earlier this year by Times Music.
In October 2007, the CD was launched at the London Review Bookshop, soon after a sell-out concert at the legendary jazz club, the Vortex. Soon after, Amit Chaudhuri and his musicians played at the Pushkin Room in Bloomsbury in London, and then at the Troubadour, where Bob Dylan played his first British gig. The music has had some excellent responses from musicians and critics from England, India, and other parts of the world, who see it as a genuine departure. |
