Mumbai’s finest musicians come together to play Broadway’s biggest hits, with a slight twist | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Mumbai’s finest musicians come together to play Broadway’s biggest hits, with a slight twist | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Anushree Majumdar |Updated: May 1, 2019 10:37:43 am

Mumbai’s finest musicians come together to play Broadway’s biggest hits, with a slight twist

The idea is to take popular tunes known to most western music lovers and give them a jazz twist.

Flautist Rajeev Raja

Rajeev Raja is preparing to serve up his annual treat for Mumbai. The former advertising executive is known in the city’s music scene as an accomplished flautist, and every year since 2014, he brings together some of Mumbai’s finest musicians for an evening of jazz, and not the way most people would expect. “Four years ago, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) approached me because they were keen to promote jazz. In India it’s a genre that is mostly consumed by aficionados and is rather niche. So, I curated a concert for them, that aimed to promote jazz for the lay listener; we called the series ‘Jazzification.’ The idea is to take popular tunes known to most western music lovers and give them a jazz twist. It’s also a chance to see how some of the finest jazz musicians in India are interpreting and improvising music live,” says Raja, who is the co-founder of BrandMusqiq, an agency that creates musical logos or “MOGOS®️” that act as a signature tune for different brands. On Sunday, Raja and his co-arranger, Rahul Wadhwani, will lead an eight-piece band that will perform some of Broadway’s biggest hits, a little jazzed up.