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An ode to cultural openness
Jazz music is slowly and surely making its way into Hyderabad. Australian musician Alex Stuart and his team performed recently at Houz of Blues.
Musician Alex Stuart shares about his musical inspiration and where it stems from. He speaks of uniting music from the six continents in a project, which he hopes to take up in upcoming years
Jazz music is slowly and surely making its way into Hyderabad. Australian musician Alex Stuart and his team performed recently at Houz of Blues.
The most interesting part of the evening was that it introduced the audience to the history of modern jazz music through the live performance. As a composer, Alex’s music is influenced by modern jazz, music from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some of the rock bands who have inspired his works are Dirty Projectors, Bjork and Grizzly Bear. These elements all enable him to create an organic genre of music, as an ode to cultural openness.
At their recent performance, the team brought culture and contemporary jazz notes to force with their performance that entranced the audience. The group includes Alex Stuart (guitarist), Warren Walker (saxophone), Nishad Pandey (rhythm guitar), Mishko M’ba (bass) and Adam Teixera (drummer), who performed some of their own compositions.
Sharing about how the Indian melodies drew him in to work with the Hindustani classical traditions, Alex shares that in his recent stint in ‘Abakuya’, he had the opportunity to explore the spirit and techniques of West African music. Apart from this, his conversations with master sarodist Anindya Banerjee plunged him into the beautiful melodies and complex rhythms of Hindustani classical music. The quartet has performed at festivals and venues across the world such as Jazz a Juan, Jazz en Touraine, Wangaratta Jazz Festival, Pune Jazz Utsav, Congo Square Jazz Fest, and many others.
On where he sees himself headed as a musician in the coming years, he says, “If the question is, will I still be a part of that universe? The answer is ‘yes’. I want to do a project including the six continents.” He further goes onto explain that the the purpose behind the project including the different cultures, is to make people happy, “and I think one can be happy only if everybody is happy. So we have to trust the chance we have to be alive and share it!” added Mishko M’ba in conclusion.
