KATHMANDU, Oct 30: The week-long jazz festival in the Himalayas, Surya Nepal Jazzmandu 2012, will commence on November 1. The festival this year features seven international artists and bands as well as five local bands and musicians.
Republica caught up via email with the artists. Excerpts:
Adil & Vasundhara (India)
From Jazz Fusion and Funk to R&B, Blues and Gospel, Adil Manuel and Vasundhara Vidalur offer a wide musical spectrum. Extensively working with artists based in India and abroad, Adil & Vasundhara routinely feature musicians from India, Turkey, France, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Argentina, Brunei, the Reunion Islands, the USA and counting.
Q&A with Vasundhara Vidalur
What led to the formation of Adil & Vasundhara?
Adil and I met purely by chance. Adil was offered a gig and wanted to perform with a fresh line up. A common friend and bass player passed my number to him. We knew nothing about each other. My singing was mainly studio oriented while he mainly played live. It just took us 10 minutes of jamming together to know that this was it!
It has been a great four years for us since then. We have managed to do a lot of things we had dreamt of and discussed on the very first day we played together. A year into us forming ‘Adil & Vasundhara’, we also left all our commercial work and our own music has been taking good care of us ever since.
What have some of your achievements from touring various international music festivals been?
I think the biggest thing one achieves from travel is a sudden internal growth. The musicians we meet and play with, the new perspectives we see on big and small things, the energy of a historical place, new cuisine…. everything has an impact on our music. Many of our songs have been inspired from our travelling. We have played in over 20 festivals since we met in 2009 - some in India, some abroad - and each one has been unique in what we have brought home from it.
What are your expectations from Jazzmandu 2012?
We have heard a lot about Jazzmandu and are looking forward to watching and interacting with many of the musicians who will be present there. We are also eager to share all the new material from our album ‘Ampersand’ which is in its final stages of production. It features a lot of greats from the Indian scene like uncle Louiz Banks, Ranjit Barot, Loy Mendonsa, Sanjay Divecha and Zubin Balaporia, some of whom have played at Jazzmandu before.
Rootman Ensemble (Thailand)
A 10 member ensemble which boasts an incredibly diverse background of musical interest including Funk, Groove, Jazz, R&B and Soul, Rootman has played at Jazz Festival and jazz parties throughout Thailand.
Q&A with Teerapoj Pritakul (Band leader)
How was the band formed?
Rootman is a special project that I formed in 2009. We wanted to mix Grooves and Jazz music and also have some electronic sound from the DJ but our melody has some BeBop line. As for the musicians to form the band, I chose everybody by myself. Our band consists of fulltime musicians from around Bangkok as well as some international musicians in Thailand.
What are your expectations from Jazzmandu 2012?
For the band, we hope that our audience in Jazzmandu will be happy and will enjoy the music that we perform. We want to have more musician friends from many nationalities and also hope to jam with Nepali musicians, if we get the chance. We also want to give people some of music that we like.
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