British-Asian bass player Shez Raja has been voted one of the ‘Hottest Bass Players in the World’ by readers of Bass Player magazine. His mother is Asian, and his father is English. He began playing the violin at nine years old, then replaced that instrument with the bass guitar a few years later. He travelled with his father to the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, where he learned to play tabla. His background is similar to that of the musical polymath Nitin Sawhney, who was born in Rochester, Kent to Punjabi immigrant parents. Both musicians successfully blend East with West in their music.
Shez Raja
Raja has just released his eighth solo album, Spellbound, in a genre which has been described as Indo-jazz-funk. He is joined by an eclectic mix of virtuoso jazz and (prog) rock musicians including guitarists John Etheridge (Soft Machine) and Guthrie Govan (the Aristocrats, Asia, Hans Zimmer, Steven Wilson), drummers Dennis Chambers, Jamie Murray and Sophie Alloway, and saxophonists Vasilis Xenopoulos and Tony Kofi. He is also joined by traditional Indian instrumentalists Gurdain Rayatt on tabla, Roopa Panesar on sitar, Ashan Papu on bansuri (bamboo flute) and Zahab Hassan on sarangi (a three-stringed bowed instrument).
‘I believe that the ultimate goal for a musician is to make music that is raw, real and from the heart, that moves and inspires people’
Shez Raja
Raja’s bass playing, on a custom-made Fodera, is superb throughout the album. His lower notes sometimes bring to mind the great Jah Wobble (Public Image Limited), the bass lines prowling around in almost dub style. Above this, he sometimes plays ornamental lines towards the top of the fretboard and makes imaginative use of effects pedals. The album is recorded in pristine quality, in audiophile sound (the review copy was available in high definition). For that reason, it’s only available on CD and vinyl, and as a download, rather than on streaming services that may degrade audio quality.
The opening track, Quantum Spirits, is infectiously joyful jazz-funk with deliciously spiky guitar. Mahirishi mindtrip begins with a drum flourish and then throws itself into a groove with an Indian flavour from the sarangi and a spacious, bluesy feel. The title track has a lovely running saxophone line and a gloriously syncopated main riff. The drumming is stunning, and nicely balanced with percussion from the tabla. Together we fly is an evocative, gently aspirational ballad with melismatic vocals from Fiza Haider, which become more Indian in style as the track progresses, with a yearning sitar solo and subtly offbeat drumming. Lucid path to the golden lotus is the only track to feature bansuri, which sounds at first like the flute playing of the late, great Barbara Thompson, then becomes more Indian in style near the end with a weeping sound that is so characteristic of the instrument, but there’s also a hint of Moog-style soloing. Vishnu is a life-affirming track, with blistering, joyfully dystopian guitar, and an evocative breakdown section with a moving call and response section. Through the multiverse features cascading sitar and an infectious bass part. Our journey takes us into darker parts of the multiverse; we head into King Crimson territory, where everything is darkly ambiguous, a fractured universe with an explosive saxophone solo.
Shez Raja live at Ronnie Scott’s
The album ends with two live tracks recorded at Pizza Express Live Soho in London. The first is a live version of the opening track, Quantum Spirits, with the raw, emotional and supremely virtuosic soloing of guitarist Guthrie Govan. The second is Rabbits, which builds to a stunning climax. Both tracks bode well for Raja’s forthcoming live performances.
Spellbound is out now via ShejRaza.com. Raja plays live at Future Yard, Wirral on 18 July, at Ronnie Scott’s on 17 September and at the 606 Club on 21 November.
Last year marked the 30th anniversary of the death of my father, John Charles Holmes, under whose benign and loving influence I developed a lifelong passion for music. He was the choirmaster and organist of the local church choir. I joined his choir at the age of six and went on to sing with several ensembles, including the choirs of Exeter and Worcester Colleges in Oxford, the BBC Symphony Chorus, the Hallé Choir and the John Powell Singers. Whenever I visit an English cathedral city, I always try to go to choral evensong, which remains part of the great choral tradition that has produced many great classical singers. Although it’s a while since I sang in public, I still appreciate choral music and several highlights of 2024 featured choirs.
I was honoured to be invited to review concerts by the superb Philharmonia Orchestra in London. I enjoyed Elgar’s choral masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius, with a premiere of a wonderfully evocative new piece, Cusp, by the baritone and composer Roderick Williams, which describes end-of-life experiences in a powerful libretto by Rommi Smith. Another moving libretto, with war poems by Wilfred Owen, featured in another stunning concert by the Philharmonia with The Bach Choir in Britten’s War Requiem. The orchestra joined forces with Garsington Opera for a joyful, semi-staged performance of another Britten piece, his opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream conducted by Douglas Boyd at the BBC Proms.
The Bach Choir and the Philharmonia. Image credit Andy Paradise
David Hill conducted both of the concerts by the Bach Choir. He appeared at Manchester’s Stoller Hall in another guise as conductor of Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the young student forces of Yale Schola Cantorum and Juilliard415, who brought joy and precision to a performance which seemed to reveal Bach’s soul in all its intellectual and spiritual glory. That weekend was very special for music-making in Manchester, as the previous day was the end of an era as Sir Mark Elder ended his tenure as Hallé Music Director, a position he held for nearly a quarter of a century. His final concert included the European premiere of James MacMillan‘s splendid new choral piece Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and a passionate, moving speech by Sir Mark. He is replaced by new Principal Conductor Kahchun Wong from Singapore, who I have only seen once so far, conducting a lively Rush Hour Concert in October in Tan Dun’s Violin Concerto: Fire Ritual and Stravinsky’s Firebird: Suite. He seems to be a bright prospect with an engaging stage presence.
I made two choral discoveries in Manchester in 2024. Firstly, The Apex Singers, a Manchester-based chamber choir of eight voices, founded and directed by Ollie Lambert, who directs this young choir remotely in his stunning folk song arrangements. Then Kantos Chamber Choir, under their conductor Ellie Slorach, brought Behold The Sea, a bold and innovative programme of maritime music to the Stoller Hall. I also discovered the fascinatingly intense music of Tim Benjamin, whose evocative pieces The Seafarer and The Wanderer were beautifully recorded by Kantos Chamber Choir.
Manchester Collective and SANSARA in Rothko Chapel
There were more fantastic chamber music performances from Manchester Collective, who I have seen perform live probably eight or ten times in the last few years, at all sizes and shapes of venues from Salford’s White Hotel to the RNCM, the Stoller Hall, the Bridgewater Hall and even the Royal Albert Hall. The Collective makes choosing to go to one of their concerts an easy decision, as it’s guaranteed there will be high-quality music-making, inspired programming and fascinating collaborations. I saw them twice in 2024, first in the uplifting Rothko Chapel with SANSARA chamber choir at the Bridgewater Hall, then in Sirocco with the force of nature that is the cellist Abel Selaocoe at the Stoller Hall. Both concerts brought deep, life-affirming joy across time and genres.
I spent the August Bank Holiday weekend in the charming market town Southwell in the heart of Nottinghamshire, enjoying the delights of the tenth annual Southwell Music Festival directed by the indefatigable baritone and conductor Marcus Farnsworth. There was supreme artistry in all the concerts, not least from the artist in residence, Mark Padmore, whose word painting in his Recital of English Song with pianist Libby Burgess was astonishing. There was new music from Martin Bussey and Gemma Bass and a world premiere of With What Sudden Joy by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, with a text compiled by the poet Kate Wakeling from words of local people in Southwell about the power and effect of music.
The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra were on excellent form as well in 2024. Early in the year, under conductor Nicholas Kraemer they were joined by Manchester Chamber Choir in a moving and dramatic interpretation of Bach’s St John Passion, 300 years after the first performance. In the Proms the orchestra under John Storgårds (Chief Conductor) played a searing version of Shostakovich’s fourth symphony, and Cassandra Miller‘s viola concerto I cannot love without trembling with Lawrence Power a remarkable soloist. The next evening, they performed Messiaen’s remarkable Turangalîla-Symphonie with pianist an Steven Osborne an energetic and compelling piano soloist. Osborne was stunning in another Messiaen work, Des canyons aux étoiles… with conductor Ludovic Morlot and outstanding solo contributions from Martin Owen (horn), Paul Patrick (xylorimba) and Tim Williams (glockenspiel) in a concert that also featured a lively wind machine and an instrument invented by the composer himself, the geophone.
The BBC Philharmonic also shone in two themed concerts. In Mischief and Magic, the orchestra under John Storgårds played one of the best live performances of Stravinsky’s Petrushka I have ever heard, and veteran Swedish trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger brought incredible virtuosity and great charm to Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto and Betsy Jolas’ Onze Lieder, and a warm arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides, Now. In A Hero’s Life the orchestra under Alpesh Chauhan celebrated the human spirit with: Richard Strauss’ description of a heroic life; Alban Gerhardt‘s fiercely dedicated performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2; and the UK premiere of This Moment by Anna Clyne, inspired by Buddhist writings and Mozart.
Peter Kirk as Lysander, Siân Griffiths as Hermia, Camilla Harris as Helena and James Newby as Demetrius in Opera North’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo credit: Richard H Smith
Not content with one production of Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the year brought a second one, this time a fully-staged version by Opera North. It was fascinating to compare the production with the Garsington/Philharmonia version a month earlier at the Proms. The most striking difference was the role of Oberon, played in Leeds by countertenor James Laing. He played the character in the more imperious style of James Bowman in Peter Hall’s Glyndebourne production from the early 1980s, rather than the more troubled, argumentative character played by Iestyn Davies in the Garsington version. Opera North also revived Mozart’s Magic Flute, starring Emyr Wyn Jones as a very human Papageno. The lovely, warm rich tones of his voice matched the warmth of his personality.
Musical polymath Nitin Sawhney – producer, performer, and composer – joined the Hallé Orchestra for The Hallé and Nitin Sawhney in Concert. Last year wasn’t a good year for Sawhney – in early March, he announced that ‘out of nowhere’ he had suffered a heart attack.
ComposerNitin Sawhney in conversation with broadcaster Nikki Bedi. Image credit: Hallé/David Hughes
Sawhney turned this experience into a new work for orchestra, Heart Suite. In this highly descriptive and powerful new piece, Sawhney drew on his vast experience as a film composer, taking us on a vivid, moving and immersive journey. On a personal note, I hope you will forgive me for quoting his lovely response on the new social network Bluesky to my review of the concert:
Finally,I would like to thank all my readers for sharing my musical journey in 2024. I hope you will join me again for more adventures in 2025.
Nitin Sawhney’s journey from heart attack to healing through music
L to R: Strings of the Hallé, Nitin Sawhney, Chris Cameron, Eos Counsell, Shapla Salique, YVA, Aref Durvesh. Image credit: Hallé/David Hughes
Nitin Sawhney is a musical polymath – producer, performer, and composer of over 60 film scores and music for TV including the BBC’s Human Planet, as well as over 20 studio albums. He has worked with Paul McCartney, Sting, Jeff Beck, Ellie Goulding, Annie Lennox, Will Young, Bob Geldof, Andy Serkis, Mira Nair, Anoushka Shankar, Nora Jones, Herbie Hancock and Nelson Mandela. In 2017, Sawhney received the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award and he was made a CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours list.
Nitin Sawhney. Image credit: Hallé
Despite his stellar career, Sawhney has remained gentle and unassuming, more concerned with making music than the trappings of success. On 4 March this year, he posted something typically self-deprecating about himself on X.
Can’t say what it is… but I’m about to go through something pretty major. Wish me luck 🙂
X (Twitter) 4 March 2024
It came as a genuine shock to his followers when he later clarified the post.
After much reflection, I’ve decided to explain myself regarding the post below…
A few days ago, out of nowhere, I had a heart attack.
X (Twitter) 6 March 2024
He went on to explain that he was rushed to hospital after the heart attack and had a stent fitted to one of the arteries leading to his heart. On 4 March, he was waiting to go through an operation to have another stent fitted, and for a bigger operation the following month.
Before the heart attack, he exercised regularly, ate healthily, and had no history of heart disease. He has since made a good recovery and has been told that as a British Asian he probably had a ‘genetic predisposition… a significantly higher likelihood of cardiovascular disease or heart attacks’, confirmed by his family history.
Sawhney had already been commissioned by the Hallé orchestra in Manchester and had almost finished a piece on the theme ofidentity, the theme of his album of the same name released in October 2023. But after his heart attack he decided to scrap what he had written and write about his traumatic experience instead. The result is his Heart Suite, premiered on Thursday evening.
Before we heard the premiere of Heart Suite, Sawhney used the strings of Hallé, conducted by Chris Cameron, to add cinematic richness to performances of thirteen of his songs. The band consisted of Sawhney himself on guitar and piano, Eos Counsell on violin, Shapla Salique and YVA on vocals, and Aref Durvesh on tabla.
YVA. Image credit: Hallé/David Hughes
The band alone featured on the opening piece Sunset, with serpentine and passionate vocals from YVA and vigorous guitar from Sawhney. The song ended with a lovely contemplative section when the tabla dropped out, followed by falling chords, sweet violin and haunting vocals from both singers.
An early highlight was You Are, based on a poem Sawhney wrote pre-COVID. Sawhney said the words changed their meaning in his mind over time; in this gorgeous song the vocal lines remained static as the accompanying chords shifted beneath. There was a lyrical acapella section at the end with solo guitar, YVA singing the final line in a breathy, sensual tone reminiscent of Billie Eilish.
Eos Counsell, Chris Cameron and Shapla Salique. Image credit: Hallé/David Hughes
There was applause when Sawhney introduced Homelands, written 25 years ago, from his 1999 album Beyond Skin. This haunting song began with a beautiful violin solo – not on the original song – from Eos Counsell, beginning with a single held note, then florid, virtuosic, evocative and ultimately uplifting playing. Warm vocals from YVA perfectly contrasted with the much faster, more vehement vocals from Shapla Salique; the two duetted superbly throughout their set.
In The Conference, Sawhney entered into an incredibly fast spoken dialogue with tabla player Aref Durvesh, who then played a virtuosic tabla solo as the audience clapped along joyfully. The classic Nadia was superbly sung by Shapla Salique, accompanied by majestic strings with evocative harmonies.
To enthusiastic applause, Sawhney introduced Immigrant, a lovely piano ballad, as a song inspired by the experience of his parents coming to this country and the ‘crazy rhetoric and nonsense’ about immigrants who ‘bring a lot to this country.’
The singers left the stage as Sawhney played an instrumental version of Prophesy, beginning with the magical sound of delicate, mysterious chords on guitar. Aref Durvesh joined him on tabla, and the two musicians had an equal partnership. The song gradually speeded up and hurtled headlong into a stunning conclusion that brought thunderous applause.
Nitin Sawhney in conversation with Nikki Bedi. Image credit: Hallé/David Hughes
The broadcaster Nikki Bedi, who said she had been moved ‘on a molecular level’ by the first half of the concert, came on stage to introduce Heart Suite for full orchestra. Sawhney told her that he woke up at 5.45 am with chest pain and became increasingly worried, then felt a crushing pain as if a 200 kg weight was crushing his chest. He blacked out and hit a glass ornament as he fell, embedding glass in his face. The paramedics told him he was in the middle of having a heart attack.
“In this highly descriptive and powerful new piece, Sawhney drew on his vast experience as a film composer, taking us on a vivid, moving and immersive journey.”
Within a month, he had started to turn his terrifying experience into a piece of music, beginning with the heart attack itself, then enjoying morphine in the ambulance (this provoked laughter from the audience), finally feeling life returning to his body as the blood began flowing again after his first operation.
In this highly descriptive and powerful new piece, Sawhney drew on his vast experience as a film composer, taking us on a vivid, moving and immersive journey. The first movement, Heart Attack, began with atonal plucked strings, like music from a horror movie. The tension increased as the music spiralled out of control. Ominous chords from Darius Battiwalla on the organ and a brass figure rising in semitones led to silence, then a fearsome organ melody. The orchestra pulsed agonisingly and after another horrifying silence we felt the oppressive, claustrophobic weight on Sawhney’s chest before he blacked out with a crash.
The Hallé orchestra with conductor Chris Cameron. Image credit: Hallé/David Hughes
The second movement, Morphine and Memories, began with the orchestra’s leader playing the two notes of the siren heard by Sawhney from inside the ambulance. This motif cleverly developed into an orchestral theme, slow moving and stately, almost Baroque, as the leader played a melody above. A Romantic melody from the strings created an ethereal sense of floating peacefully as the morphine kicked in. A woodwind passage suggested that Sawhney was suspended above himself, looking down on his helpless body. We felt a warm glow as we drifted with Sawhney along a river to a golden, sunlit sea. The whole movement was meltingly beautiful.
The final movement, Operation and Blood Flow, began with a playful description in the woodwind of blood beginning to flow back during the first operation to fit the stent. The pulsing rhythm we heard in the first movement returned, but it was less frightening now as Sawhney came back to life with the blood pulsing through his body. But there was a sense of foreboding as ominous, slow-moving harmonies accompanied frenetic strings. A single held note from the organ led to a short passage like Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, creating a sense of awe. A slow waltz felt joyful but still slightly ambiguous in tone. A cascade of organ notes fell into silence. Finally a glockenspiel and horn duet led to sweeping strings, which created a sense of contemplative calm and relief. The journey ended with an immense feeling of catharsis – to use the poet John Milton’s phrase, ‘calm of mind all passion spent.’
Performers
Nitin Sawhney CBE guitar and keyboard Eos Counsell violin Chris Cameron conductor Shapla Salique vocalist YVA(Amy Holford) vocalist Aref Durvesh tabla The Hallé orchestra Nikki Bedi interviewer
