Date: Saturday, April 2, 2011
Venue: Asia Society
Reviewed by William Harvey
On April 2nd, 2011, Tirtha performed at the Asia Society in Manhattan to promote the release of their new self titled album, Tirtha. The trio consists of Indian musicians including American born pianist- composer Vijay Iyer, guitarist-composer Prasanna from South India, and classically trained tabla player Nitin Mitta, also Indian born. The performance, which was to precede an intense two-week tour of Europe, was enthusiastically received by a full house of concertgoers.
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Elements of their music reached far across the boundaries of traditional genres and cultures to produce a sound that was entirely fresh, unique and extremely hard to pin down. Throughout the performance, listeners were left with a sense of familiarity and wonder both at once. Every composition had a clear melody and harmonic identity which were used as vessels for improvisation on a very high level. Each musician was featured as a soloist and there was a degree of spontaneous interaction that could only be found in a live performance. Such a description could easily apply to a noteworthy jazz performance, and in many ways it was.
Throughout the performance Iyer and Mitta displayed an intense level of chemistry as rhythm section players, both of whom shared the role as bass and rhythmic accompanist in addition to soloists. Iyer and Prasanna would take turns playing the melodies of each other’s songs, alternating through sections and sometimes playing in unison. More often than not, guitarist Prasanna functioned as a melodic player as he left the rhythmic comping up to Iyer and Mitta. In some sections he would play sustained harmonic pads with his chord voicings behind Vijay’s melodic playing, occasionally with a subtle effect pedal.
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The group appeared to be co-led by Iyer and Prasanna as they took turns introducing each other’s original compositions while sharing insight about their inspiration and origin of song names. In one funny aside after the group performed Prasanna’s composition entitled “Poly-theism;” Prasanna announced that he’d be changing the name to “Poly-atheism”. So the night went. Although formed in 2007, the trio has seldom performed together as each member has kept busy with other projects. At the end of this concert the audience gave a standing ovation until the musicians returned for a brief encore. Thus following their journey across the Atlantic, Tirtha should return as an even more experienced unit that will continue to captivate audiences worldwide.
Other links
Tirtha MySpace site
Buy the CD
