Robert Vijay Gupta and Badal Roy breathe life into the tall, golden wood ceilings of Walt Disney Concert Hall with subtle (and not-so-subtle) sounds of violin and tabla.
Badal Roy, famous for his many recordings on Indian drums for Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman, returns in this audiophile recording made in Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. He joins his cousin, the charismatic Robert Gupta, playing the Nathan Milstein Stradivarius violin from 1716. Not only is Robert superbly talented and the youngest member of the LA Philharmonic, but he is also a Senior TED fellow, executive director of Street Symphony (which brings music to homeless mentally ill people, and the real-life violin teacher of Nathaniel Ayers, the person so sensitively portrayed in the major motion picture The Soloist. This recording traverses time and several continents, from the opening Indian raga for violin in tabla (Raga Jaunpuri), through Medieval Europe with Biber's famous Pasaccaglia through John Harbison's Four Songs of Solitude and the Pereira suite written for Robert himself. Badal Roy premiers Calcutta Sunrise for tabla solo on the opening track. Roy still wears the same sunglasses and channels the same energy he did in the sixties and seventies.