Friday, October 2, 2009

Piazzolla in India

If you closed your eyes, you might think you were in a small jazz club on the lower east side of Manhattan. You would be wrong, because in today's video, you are actually in Arjun Sagar Gupta's living room in Delhi. This is the first Piazzolla performance video posted on YouTube from India in 2009 - perhaps the first ever.

The group is known as The Variety Hour and from an article in India Today, I learned that Gupta is on piano, Sahil Warsi is on bass and Nikhil Vasudevan is on drums. All three are trained musicians although all have "day jobs." Gupta is a business man (a successful business man from the appearance of his gear) working to bring green technology to India, Vasudevan is a copywriter at Studio 4-D; and Warsi is pursuing a Master’s in Philosophy at Delhi University. I would not claim that their playing is exceptional but it is certainly acceptable and they have done their homework on jazz basics and on Piazzolla's greatest hit, Libertango. The Variety Hour appears every Sunday at The Park Hotel at Connaught Place so if you are Delhi on Sunday, stop by and request a little Piazzolla from the band.

If the video does not appear below, click here.



To learn more about Piazzolla videos, visit the Piazzolla Video site.

3 comments:

  1. Hey! Thanks for the kind words, we're working towards exceptional playing, but it takes time :)

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  2. Hi Arjun, I am very elated after seeing this 'piece' of yours on You Tube.

    I am hoping that you will continue adding more exceptional pieces in the future.

    Good job!

    Sashi Mozumder

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  3. OMG!
    Arjun!
    You are a class apart!
    -Badraan

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