What Happened When Hammonds Met Shri

Over the last few months the band has had the opportunity to work on a cross-cultural music project created by Shri Sriram. Having heard brass bands for the first time several months ago Shri approached the Arts Council with the idea of putting Indian music together with a traditional brass band. The results of the experimental phase can be seen below.

Shri is a composer, musician and producer who has performed around the World. He wrote the music for the Indian release of Life of Pi, remixed work for Dela Soul, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Kronos Quartet & Asha Bhosle as well as performing his own pieces at  Glastonbury Festival, Jools Holland's TV show and the Montreux & London Jazz Festivals. His music has been placed on adverts like BP & Pantene Pro-V as well as TV shows like CSI & Top Gear.

Sri usually performs on his own custom made bass guitar (shown in the picture above) and he can also play many other instruments as well. The photo on the right shows his first attempts at playing a different type of bass for the first time.

Having never heard a brass band before Shri enlisted the help of Ben Castle to arrange his ideas. Once this was done we then had three sessions with Shri and various musicians while he experimented with different ways the band, bass guitar, drum kit, sitar and vocalists could be mixed with the band.

Several recordings and videos of this initial experimentation phase can be seen below. Now this step is complete the next phase will involve Shri writing more music to build this initial idea into a fully fledged performance.