Global YouTube and chart topping sensation, Sachal Jazz Ensemble will give their world premiere performance at the Alchemy Festival at London’s Southbank Centre, Europe’s largest centre for the arts. Drawing on influences from Lahore to New York, the Ensemble presents innovative jazz and bossa nova standards from their recent album that has captured musical imaginations with a flood of internet hits. Their fresh re-working of Dave Brubeck’s iconic ‘Take Five’ prompted the jazz legend to exclaim that “this is the most interesting and different recording of ‘Take Five’ that I have ever heard.” Other innovative interpretations include Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ and Dave Grusin’s ‘Mountain Dance’, the latter highlighting some incredible sitar playing. In the reworked ‘Misty’, composed by Erroll Garner, the sitar and tabla supply the melody lines layered on a lush rhythmic foundation. The inspiration behind the Sachal Jazz Ensemble and the wider Sachal project is London-based businessman-turned-studio boss Izzat Majeed. Working with consultants from London’s Abbey Road studios, he set up state-of-the-art studios in Lahore, rescued Pakistani musicians from poverty and brought them together to make music. The revival has prompted comparisons with the Buena Vista Social Club’s rediscovery of a lost generation of Cuban musicians. Majeed’s wider goal is to rub fresh magic into Lahore’s musical traditions, once a sub-continental cultural hub. He says Pakistan’s classical music scene was decimated in the 1980s when the dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, following an austere Islamic line, crushed the local film industry. Majeed, who grew up listening to jazz greats like Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, says there are similarities between the improvisational aspects of classical music from the sub-continent and Jazz. “Take Five’s rhythmic structure and time scale is pretty close to our kind of music,” Majeed says. ‘Take Five’ has done so well because it was something new and well-played.” The performance at the QEH on 17th April at 8pm will present improvised contemporary classical music, Jazz Standards and Bossa Nova interpretations. The festival, described as ‘the UK’s most ambitious celebration of arts and culture from the subcontinent” and now its third year, runs from 12th to 22nd April. The festival features a wide-ranging programme of South Asian contemporary and traditional music and dance, film, craft and fashion.
