Spring update
A brief update of my recent musical activities:
I played percussion on the sound track to the recent channel 4 mini-series "Indian Summers".
The percussion for all 9 episodes was recorded live as a trio made up of myself, Kuljit Bhamra, and Paul Clarvis, and the sessions were at Air Studios
The percussion texture we ended up going with was based around Kuljit's tabla sound with Paul and I filling things out - I played alot of Mridangam and Ghatam (South Indian drums) plus some middle eastern drums + shakers, while Paul took care of the low end with a massive Cajon, plus his usual selection of unpredictable and inspiring sound choices. Working alongside these two felt like a bit of a masterclass and I learnt alot. Hopefully there will be a second series!
I've also been on tour with Belinda Sykes and Joglaresa . I've admired Belinda's work for many years so to finally get a chance to work with her is fantastic - the music, hard to describe, is a blend of medieval influences with flavours from English folk, eastern Europe, North Africa and the middle east - so I get to play some rhythms and instruments in a context that very rarely comes up - this has been wonderful - we have many gigs touring round the UK during the rest of 2015.
The photo above is from a Vibraphone session I did recently at Air Studios for composer Richard Canavan who was completing a corporate film for Airbus. The session was unusual in that it was solo Vibraphone, and involved performing Steve Reich type repetative rhythmic units that were to be built into a larger percussion texture in post production - it was great to play Vibes on their own in the big room.
Work on my band PENYA's album continues with a number of exciting developments - Aside from the fact that I am now playing more guitar in the band than percussion, we have enlisted the help of producer Leon Brichard (whose productions include Ibibio Sound Machine)
and the results have sofar been excellent - most of the band tracking has been completed at the Fish Factory last month via an epic 3 day session - still much work to be done but there is an unending amount of optimism and excitement surrounding this project.
Other stuff - Tamar Osborn's project "Collocutor" make a rare appearance on April 18th at If Music - details here, - and tomorrow I'm hitting the road with Melt Yourself Down in France
- I'm looking forward to the summer - thanks for reading -
#magnusmehta #Airstudios #percussionist #joglaresa #collocutor #meltyourselfdown #southindianpercussion #tabla #tablaplayer #sessionplayer #fishfactory #penya
