Soumik Datta

Following his tour of the United Kingdom and India, sarod virtuoso Soumik Datta descends on the Small Hall for an intimate concert. Firmly rooted in traditional Indian music, he strives to preserve centuries-old musical heritage while bringing the universal and personal values expressed in the music to the present. His new performance Mone Rekho (‘remembering’) stimulates the imagination.

This concert is co-presented by DesiYUP and Het Concertgebouw

Soumik Datta is an absolute master on the sarod, a 19-string fretless lute. And much more than that, he is also a versatile composer, producer, bandleader, TV presenter and artistic director of the Soumik Datta Arts charity. On the one hand, Soumik Datta is firmly rooted in traditional (Indian) music, and strives to preserve centuries-old musical heritage. On the other hand, he uses contemporary art forms to expose and address the pressing issues of our time in a topical manner. In which, he believes, music can serve as a “cultural anchor” that can reinforce a sense of community, identity and heritage and reach people from different backgrounds in powerful ways. In recent years, Soumik gained even more notoriety through the legendary artists and ensembles he has worked with, including Beyonce, Jay-Z, Bill Bailey, Nitin Sawhney, Anoushka Shankar, Arijit Singh, Akram Khan, Javed Akhtar, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the City of London Sinfonia.

Mone Rekho

What is the price of forgetting? What results when we misremember things? Mone Rekho (“remember” in Bengali) is an immersive concert that explores how the beauty and complexity of Indian music transforms through the versatility of memory. Mone Rekho grew out of Soumik’s conversations with the elderly in nursing homes. The concert interweaves Indian music with electronics, visual collages, film scenes, personal anecdotes and humor. Accompanied by Gurdain Singh Rayatt on tabla and Camilo Tirado on live effects, Soumik moves between the roles of student, storyteller and master musician in a space that changes from concert hall to classroom, from nursing home to the streets of Kolkata. The audience is left with something to think about – from remembering lost memories to learning something new. Intimate yet outspoken, Mone Rekho excites the imagination.