Take a deep breath. This is not a political post. It’s another post about music.
Indo-Pak Coalition is a current trio project that includes Rudresh Mahanthappa on saxophone, Rez Abbasi on guitar, and Dan Weiss on tabla. It’s just one of a number of fascinating, adventurous collaborations taking place on the creative-music scene these days. Along with his longtime collaborator, fellow-desi and piano genius Vijay Iyer, Rudresh is a regular on this scene and his work, whether in straight-ahead jazz or cross-genre collaborations, never fails to fascinate. He’s got a wonderful tone and attack that place him in the Coltrane legacy, and he’s done very thoughtful work that injects classical Indian concepts and themes into forward-looking contemporary jazz. Read more about him here, and about Pakistani-American guitarist Abbasi here.
Indo-Pak’s new suite “Apti” premieres tomorrow night, 5/31, at Joe’s Pub in NYC, and I encourage local Mutineers to join me there.
About the new project, Rudresh says this:
Mahanthappa is excited about his upcoming gig with the Indo-Pak Coalition: It has this weird twist to it because, okay, you have this trio and the two brown guys are playing western instruments and the white guy’s playing an Indian instrument! [laughs] So it’s kind of funny and it’s interesting because Dan is an amazing drummer, but he’s also Samir Chatterjee’s most prized student; he’s a really monstrous tabla player, but he came out playing the tabla after playing drumset. And here we [Mahanthappa and Abbasi] are: we play these western instruments. So our perspectives are very different. It’s been really great to work with that group because we can talk about everything in very Indian termswhether it’s Karnatic or Hindustani or whateverand then we can turn around and talk about it in totally Western terms.
This promises to be a great show. I hope to see you there!
