• Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Opera North-South Asian Arts-uk to celebrate Winter Solstice on Dec 21

Supriya Nagarajan (Photo: Opera North)

By: Shubham Ghosh

EMINENT Carnatic singer Supriya Nagarajan will observe the Winter Solstice in the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, the UK, on December 21 in company with musical partner Duncan Chapman and musicians from the Orchestra of Opera North in a performance inspired by the Northern Lights.

Nagarajan, who was born in Mumbai, India, and studied vocal music from the age of five, is the founding member and chief executive officer of Manasamitra, a UK-based arts organisation. While rehearsing for the upcoming event, she said how the collaboration between Opera North and South Asian Arts-uk came about and described her plans for a unique multi-sensory performance capturing the magic sights, sounds and atmosphere of twilight in the north.

Opera North-South Asian Arts-uk to celebrate Winter Solstice on Dec 21
Supriya Nagarajan at a rehearsal ahead of Winter Solstice in the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, the UK, on December 21, 2021. (Photo: Opera North)

Opera North is a national opera company and a leading UK arts organisation while South Asian Arts-uk is the centre of excellence in Indian classical music and dance.

“I’ll be singing a couple of ragas (the Indian equivalent of a scale or mode in Western music) that are meant to be performed at night, in the North Indian Hindustani tradition. In South Asian Carnatic music, though, our ragas are not time-bound in that way. The key element is the emotion that you put behind the lyrics, how you perform it, the way it is delivered. I could sing the same raga in the morning and the evening and it’ll be different according to each context.

“I experience a condition called synaesthesia – the merging of senses that aren’t normally connected. It means that I can explore my senses differently all the time, and I create each musical piece with a picture in mind: the setting sun among the trees; the light shining through. The synaesthete in me is always conscious of what the picture is. For example, during a piece about the rain, I can smell the fragrant mud!” she said.

Opera North-South Asian Arts-uk to celebrate Winter Solstice on Dec 21
A scene from SAA-uk’s Summer Solstice in the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, the UK, in 2017. (Photo credit: Simon Godley)

Nagarajan, who supports several artistes locally and nationally, also said, “I’m hoping that the audience in the Howard Assembly Room will find this concert an intense sensory experience, too: we have beautiful visuals from the designer Pritpal Ajimal that begin the concert at dusk. When we come to the last piece it’ll be almost night and the Northern Lights visuals will come in.

“Dusk Notes, my 2020 recording with the composer, sound artist and musician Duncan Chapman, was all about being in nature with Carnatic music. I wanted to place South Indian classical music in a completely different space, and the sounds I fell in love with were the sounds of nature at dusk. Our Winter Solstice performance in the Howard Assembly Room will be an expanded, live interpretation of our album.”

Winter Solstice brings South Asian Arts-uk back to the reopened Howard Assembly Room for the first time since their Summer Solstice event which happened there in 2017. Keranjeet Kaur Virdee, chief executive and artistic director of South Asian Arts-uk, said, “This festive concert with a difference brings musicians from two very different traditions together with video projection and lighting design, to create an immersive experience of the Northern Lights in the heart of Leeds”.

“We’re very excited about returning to the Howard Assembly Room for the latest in our long series of collaborations with Opera North, and we’re looking forward to announcing an even larger-scale project in the New Year,” Virdee added.

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