Chandra - Bansal Trio
Jazzland Recordings is proud to present a perfect marriage of tradition and modernity, both eastern and western. Bansal Trio, led by Harpreet Bansal (violin) and featuring Vojtěch Procházka (piano) and Andreas Bratlie (percussion) release their Jazzland Recordings debut, Chandra on September 4th 2015.
Bansal herself has had an outstanding career to date, working with many outstanding performers in both eastern (Ustad Sharif Khan, Tariq Khan, Sukhvinder Singh Namdari, Shabaz Hossein, and Rafaqat Ali Khan) and western (Unni Løvlid, Poing, The Source, Per Oddvar Johansen, Stian Carstensen, Nils Olav Johansen, Ingebjørg Bratland, Steinar Ofsdal, and Morten Halle) musical traditions. Her expressive, technically elegant style joyfully traverses boundaries of genre and historical tradition with graceful ease. Vojtěch Procházka also has a fine pedigree as one of the foremost young Czech pianists, and a CV that includes Ivar Grydeland, Per Oddvar Johansen, Kari Rønnekleiv, Espen Reinertsen, Ingar Zach and Kim Myhr. Andreas Bratlie is a drummer and percussionist who has quietly forged his career, and has worked with many artists, notably Andreas Ljones, Bertine Zetlitz, Mira Craig, and Noora Noor. On this recording, he also brings elements of voice alongside his superb table and percussion work.
The music exposes varied moods of light and shade, serenity through to agitation, and a degree of hinted spirituality amid urban humdrum automatism. The extended piece, Bhairavi,- a traditional piece arranged and interpreted by the group, stands as a monolithic centrepiece, both in scale and variation, while the rest of the album features various meditations upon traditional pieces, as well as three original compositions.