Introducing Satish and his FIREBIRD?!

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Since coming to New York I have been hungry to see and meet all kinds of musicians. I have met so many great musicians meanwhile that I decided to feature some of them in DooBeeDooBeeDoo. So when my guitarist, Alejandro Castellano, talked about an Indian-American trumpet player by the name of Satish, I immediately got interested in this gentleman. I liked the idea that an Indian-American plays the valve/slide trumpet and incorporates Indian scales and sounds in his music.

I asked him to hook me up with Satish. He emailed me his Facebook address and his website. In his website, which was very interesting, I found out about his projects and music background. After doing my Satish research I decided to meet him in person which happened at Nublu, October 29th, when he was playing with the Underground Horns.

Fortunately, due to the delay of the show, Satish and I had enough time to talk and to get to know each other. Later, when listening  to his trumpet playing, I felt that Satish could be a very interesting voice and contributor in my band, The Tehran-Dakar Brothers.

After the show l invited him to rehearse with my band which already happened, to play the next show with us which will happen soon, and to record on some of my songs which will happen next week.

Who is Satish?

In 1996 Satish gave up a budding career in biology for another budding career, in music, and moved to New York City with little more than a trumpet in his hands and jazz in his ears. Four years later he started a pioneering  jazz/funk/Indian classical fusion band called Indofunk, which showcased his unique valve/slide trumpet, the Firebird, running through multiple guitar effects pedals.
Indofunk enjoyed a great deal of success in the early 2000s. In the years since he dissolved Indofunk, Satish has been active as a sideman with groups ranging from rock to funk to electronica. He presently co-leads two duos; one, with an  acoustic guitar player, is heavily Indian-oriented, and the other, featuring a laptop player, is completely electronic.”

What is the FIREBIRD? 

Satish addresses many of the questions and inquiries he’s received about his unique trumpet, the Firebird, in this video multipart series. In this first episode, he introduces the horn, demonstrates how it works, and gives some history and background on the instrument.

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In this second episode, he starts to explain how he uses it in an Indian classical context, plays some examples of typical Indian ornaments, then pauses to allow the audience to read up on and listen to some examples.

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For more information, please see http://www.konakkol.com or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebird…

For audio samples of me playing the Firebird, please see http://satish.muxtape.com (especially “Raga Charukeshi”)

And here is an Indofunk video at the Bitter End (NY) playing the FIREBIRD.