Sandy Evans Quintet: Ahimsa Meditations on Gandhi

Featuring soulful, melodic improvisations and stunning tabla and drum exchanges, this is music to lift the spirit and nourish the soul.

Created and directed by internationally renowned composer and saxophonist Sandy Evans, 150 years after Gandhi’s birth: Ahimsa fuses jazz, Hindustani and Carnatic chant with contemporary electronic sounds. Each of the movements is a musical response to a fundamental idea from Gandhi’s writings on Ahimsa (non-violence), translated from Sanskrit by Chris Whiteman and Vasudevacharya, and sung by the charismatic Sarangen Sriranganathan.

Featuring: 
Sandy Evans (saxophones), Bobby Singh (tabla), Sarangan Sriranganthan (sitar, voice), Brett Hirst (double bass), Alon Ilsar (drums, airsticks). 

Dr Sandy Evans OAM is an internationally renowned composer and saxophonist with a passion for improvisation and new music. She has played with and written for some of the most important groups in Australian jazz since the early 1980s, toured extensively in Australia, Europe, Canada and Asia, and been featured on over 40 albums. She leads the Sandy Evans Trio and Sextet, and co-leads Clarion Fracture Zone and GEST8.

With a keen interest in Indian classical music, Sandy collaborates regularly with Sydney-based Indian musicians Sarangan Sriranganathan and Bobby Singh. Her CD Kapture, a tribute to South African freedom fighter Ahmed Kathrada, was reviewed as being “…a masterfully performed fusion of jazz and Indian classical musics… the improvisations exemplify the virtuosic energy that is a key resonance between jazz and Indian classical music.” Cummins 1/6/15 www.musictrust.com.au.