I followed a link yesterday afternoon about a forthcoming performance by Kuljit Bhamra at the British Library [Late]. Kuljit is a British Asian tabla drummer and percussionist. You should be able hear a brief sample of his playing, together with his mother Mohinder Kaur Bhamra singing Gidda Pao Haan Deo here. (Thanks to Spinning in Air for that link).
I then read, to my delight, that Kuljit was playing in a concert with one of my musical heroes – Kathryn Tickell (Northumbrian small pipes & fiddle) [Kathryn Tickell]. What’s more, it was in a one-off performance by an asian-celtic folk fusion group with 3 other folk musicians playing sitar, accordion and fiddle. All part of the Spitalfields festival.
Right up my street ! Before I knew it I’d packed my work and was on my way home to drag wife and baby off to see it. Wife wasn’t really keen, to tell the truth, but I wanted to take baby anyway, and she didn’t trust me to look after him properly, so she came.
The venue was the marvellously crumbling Wilton’s Music Hall: “the world’s oldest and last surviving grand music hall” ! [http://www.wiltons.org.uk/history/]. The building is in such a delapidated condition, but so full of character. Like being in parts of Florence. One of London’s great “unknown wonders” !
As usual, we arrived a little late, and the (amateur) organisers made a pit of a palaver about that, and the fact that we wanted to take the baby in to hear the concert There was such a lot of overdramatic shushing of the bar staff and ushers going on as we waited for a suitable interval in the performance to slip in.
In the end, we saw only about half of the concert. The group was playing a lot of new music, specially written for this group and this event. Not all of it great, I thought. But Kathryn and friends play a couple of toe-tapping reels towards the end of her set, and the whole group played one composition of hers, which I thought very good.
Wife loved the venue, but didn’t care that much for the music.
Baby just loved it all !
Good times !
