2016 Beches Indian Brew

Posted May 28, 2017

With a last concert at the Umeå Jazz Festival, the one year long Beches Indian Brew project came to a successful end. It started in december 2015 when Beches Brew went to India to give concerts in Chennai, Pune and Mumbai together with some of todays greatest Karnatic and Hindustani musicians backed by generous support from Swedish Performing Arts Agency Musikverket. 

In August 2017 an album of live recordings from the Swedish tour was released. 

It started in Chennai

After rehearsals our first concert was held in Chennai where our collaboration with J.B. Srutisagar, Sornalatha Akkarai, N. Amrit and V. Suresh was highly appreciated, even by the quite conservative classic Karnatic rasikas. Here is a video by Jöns Jönsson about our time in Chennai leading up to the Shree Krishna Ghana Sabha concert on January 3.

then we did concerts in Mumbai and Pune

From Chennai we went to Mumbai where we joined forces with bansuri (flute) great Nityanand Haldipur and my tabla gurubhai Sadanand Naimpalli. We played together at Talmakiwadi and at Tata Institute of Social Sciences to excited audiences and also gave a workshop at True School of Music and played at the Blue Frog clubs. Here we are after the TISS concert.

In October 2016 four great Karnatic vidwans came to Sweden for the project’s finale.

Akkarai Sisters, the wonderful violinist/singers Akkarai Subhalakshmi and Akkarai Sornalatha together with K. U. Jayachandra Rao, mridangam and B. Shree Sundarkumar on khanjira joined BECHES INDIAN BREW in a lovely series of concerts that started at Stockholm Jazz Festival and via concerts in Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Malmö and Kristianstad ended at the Umeå Jazz Festival with a last concert broadcast by Swedish Radio. A substantial part of this concert will be included on our coming album.

Karnatic workshops and concerts were held at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and at the Academy of Music and Drama in Gothenburg. Pure Karnatic concerts were also given in Norrköping and Umeå.
As an extra bonus my old teacher from Ghana, Senior Master Drummer Doe Kushiator of the Ewe-cult was able to join us for the Swedish concerts. Here we all are during rehearsals before the first concert.

These are the members of Beches Brew

Staffan Svensson, Thomas Gustafsson, Stefan Bellnäs, Max Schultz, Livet Nord, Jonas Knutsson, Sir Thomas Jäderlund, Lise-Lotte Norelius, Göran Klinghagen, Bengt Berger (Sound engineer Sigge Krantz took the photo).

Photos, videos, reviews and the future

Don’t miss the videos at our YouTube playlist around our project. Everything will be found at the BECHES INDIAN BREW page at Country & Eastern. A lot of what we did was recorded by Sigge Krantz so we hope to find a cd in that material for release in the spring. And hopefully a Karnatic one with the Akkarai Sisters as well.

Here is a video sample by Jöns Jönsson where you can follow the piece Edith around during the project, from rehearsals and concerts in Chennai, Mumbai and Stockholm:

But there is a lot more documentation.
VIDEOS, BROADCAST, PHOTOS, REVIEWS, ARTICLES:

VIDEOS:
More videos at the Country & Eastern YouTube channel
Dagar, Djur from the album
Congo Square from the album
Edith on tour by Jöns Jönsson
20160920 Presskonferens, SVT-video
20161016 Snippet from Dhanyasisters
20161021 Soundcheck in Malmö
20161029 Soundcheck in Umeå
201629 Kö till konserten

BROADCAST:
20161029 Broadcast from Umeå (available during November,
Beches Indian Brew after 3 h 30 mins)

PHOTOS AND DRAWINGS:
20161021 Christer Männikus’ photos from Beches Indian Brew in Malmö
20161016 Martin Ehrlings drawings from Stockholm
20161029 Stephan Artistfoto Nord’s photos
20161015 Shreesundarkumar’s photos

REVIEWS:
20180227 Raul de Gama’s exhaustive great review in World Music Review
20161022 Alexander Agrell, Sydsvenskan
20161023 Kristianstadsbladet
20161030 Johan Hauknes, Salt Peanuts
20161031 Beches häxbrygd festivalens höjdpunkt

ARTICLES:
20160920 Press conference for Umeå Jazz Festival (Swedish)
20161026_Förhandsartikel i VK (Swedish)
20161031 VK om jämlikhet vid Umeå Jazzfestival

Press kits to download

Beches Indian Brew – presentation_ENGLISH
Beches Indian Brew – presentation_SWEDISH
Beches Indian Brew – press photos 130MB
Beches Indian Brew_- poster.jpg
Beches Indian Brew – poster.pdf
Beches Indian Brew – logo
Beches Indian Brew – Technical Rider
Akkarai Sisters – Technical Rider
YouTube – spellista

Beches Indian Brew has been possible thanks to a generous grant from the Swedish Government agency Musikverket and the persistent logistic support by Göran Kindlund.