Every musician knows the feeling of doing a gig that’s absolutely AMAZING. Tonight was one of them. I played with the Brooklyn Raga Massive All-Star Orchestra at the Rubin Museum Auditorium tonight. It was off the hook. There were countless times during the performance where something happened that would make us all go “Damn! How did we pull that off?”
I was given a few solos. They were good. But it was the ensemble improvisations that were really extraordinary.Things happened that we never rehearsed, and could never have planned for.
All the heavyweights of the New York City Indian music scene were there, including Krishna Bhatt (https://en.wikipedia.org/
What was really funny was after soundcheck, we were hanging out drinking coffee and eating pizza, and one of the guys sat down at the piano they had back stage, and started playing jazz standards. Then the Indian guys picked up their instruments and started playing along! Did you ever hear “Someday My Prince Will Come” played on a bansurai or “Giant Steps’ played on a sarod?? Of course I got in on it too. Sameer Gupta (one of the tabla players, and BRM co-counder) picked up an upright bass and started a blues in F! I had no idea he played bass!! He was good.