About Me
ABOUT THE MUSIC and AMIT CHAUDHURI (Buy CDs from amazon.com or http://cdbaby.com/cd/amitchaudhuri or Apple iTunes or www.cduniverse.com)
This Is Not Fusion is a project in experimental music conceptualised by Amit Chaudhuri, bringing together the raga with jazz, rock, and the blues. Chaudhuri is one of the foremost Indian writers in English ('one of his generation's best writers', the Guardian; 'one of the most talented and versatile writers of his generation', the Village Voice), as well as an acclaimed and highly innovative musician/ singer.Besides open, experimental structures, This Is Not Fusion also has an increasing number of songs composed by Chaudhuri in its repertoire. After its huge and acclaimed opening at the Gyan Manch, Calcutta on 15 January 2005, when both the audience and critics applauded its conceptual and musical originality, it travelled to Delhi for the 'Building Bridges: 60 Years of the UN' concerts. Then, to great acclaim, it went to Berlin, the theatreschauspiele at Frankfurt, the Lille 3000 Festival in France, the School of Music, Norwich, the British Museum, London, and to the Palais de Bozar in Brussels. Ivan Hewett, one of Britain's foremost music critics, said in the Daily Telegraph, London, 'Chaudhuri's 'non-fusion' music creates a striking metaphor for the urban sensibility, which today is increasingly the condition of everybody, even those who stay at home.' The CD, This Is Not Fusion, was recently released in India by Times Music. In the first ever Indian workshop on experimental music organised by the singer Shubha Mudgal at Ahmedabad, this project was described as a landmark involving the creation of a new genre by other esteemed musicians, composers, and musicologists from all over India and other parts of the world.In 2007, Amit chaudhuri and his band had a sellout concert at the Vortex, in London. In June 2008, they had another full house gig at the Vortex, and a full house 'jazz night' at the Master's Lodge, St John's College, Cambridge. Earlier this year, they had a very successful appearance at the Jazzfest, Calcutta.AMIT CHAUDHURI is one of India's leading writers and novelists. He has won major awards in Britain, the US, and India for his fiction, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Sahitya Akademi Award. His work is translated into several languages. He's been Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, Leverhulme Fellow at Cambridge, Visiting Professor at Columbia University, Samuel Fischer Guest Professor at Freie University, Berlin, and now spends part of the year at the University of East Anglia as Professor of Contemporary Literature. He is also an acclaimed vocalist in the Hindustani classical tradition who has performed all over the world, with two HMV recordings to his credit, one of which has just been released on CD by HMV.COMMENTS FROM CRITICS AND MUSICIANS -"Chaudhuri's 'non-fusion' music creates a striking metaphor for the urban sensibility." Ivan Hewitt, Daily Telegraph, London"Sublime music...' Wall Street Journal, Asia"Chaudhuri is a wonderful singer-- without any qualification such as 'considering his distinction as a writer.' There is a sense of calm, a simplicity, an inwardness to his singing which deeply appeals to me." Vikram Seth, author'One of India's most talented musicians.' N Radhakrishnan, editor, Rolling Stone India“I think Chaudhuri’s CD (and I have listened to it several times by now) is a
landmark project in the inter-musical landscape between Western and
Indian music. It stems from a very personal between-the-worlds and is
attractive because the necessary negotiations within the musical
sphere reach out to so many other levels of understanding music:
social, biographical, technological. But most of all it is a kind of
music that has clearly defined roots: not in one tradition or the
other but in a very personal terrain of the globalized soul. Very
often, music critics demand "authenticity" and "honesty" from music -
a demand bound to produce a phoney parochial "authenticity": for no
musician today lives unaware of all the other musical possibilities
around them. Chaudhuri’s music is "authentic" in another, more important
sense: it does not construct an ideal place, but shows us where it
came from and what is lost - but also what can be gained in admitting
strangeness into your own tradition.†Sandeep Bhagwati, well-known Indo-German composer of Western art music, formerly composer for the Ensemble Modern, Berlin, and professor at the Dept of Music, Concordia University, Canada"Universally appealing... both the melodies and the lyrics are slyly parodic." Naresh Fernandes, Time Out Bombay
