Ragabop
Trio Steve Smith ·
George Brooks · Prasanna
Drummer Steve Smith, saxophonist George
Brooks, and guitarist Prasanna - three
remarkable musical talents expressing a
distinctly twenty-first century perspective on
global music - have collaborated on a new
recording entitled Raga Bop Trio. Steve Smith,
George Brooks and Prasanna released Raga Bop
Trio on July 20, 2010 on the AbstractLogix
label. The Raga Bop Bop Trio undertook an
extensive USA tour during November and December
of 2010 in support of their debut release.
The music of The Raga Bop Trio is unique in
that the group's direction is grounded in jazz,
with its focus on groove, atmosphere and
harmonic adventure, yet also deeply rooted in
the rhythmic and melodic traditions of Indian
classical music.
About The Band
George Brooks is a prolific
and diverse saxophonist and composer, acclaimed
for successfully bridging the worlds of jazz and
Indian classical music. He is the founder of
several important Indian fusion groups including
Summit with Zakir Hussain and Steve Smith,
Bombay Jazz with Larry Coryell and Ronu Majumdar
and the Kirwani Quartet with Dutch harpist
Gwyneth Wentink and Indian flute maestro
Hariprasad Chaurasia.
Brooks' deep
understanding of raga has lead to collaborations
with many of India's most respected artists. He
has performed at major festivals throughout
India and was a featured soloist on John McLaughlin's 2008, Grammy nominated Floating
Point CD. His facility with genre bending music
has led to distinctive collaborations with Terry
Riley, Yo-Yo Ma, The Mark Morris Dance Company
and Merchant/Ivory Productions. Admired as an
innovator, Brooks remains grounded in American
vernacular music and has worked with blues
greats Etta James, Albert Collins and Roy
Rogers, R&B legends the Temptations, Mary Wilson
and the Shirelles, jazz innovators Henry Kaiser,
Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton and Jaki Byard
and contemporary singer song writers Jackie
Greene, Barbara Higbie, and Leni Stern.
Brooks has performed on many of the world's
great stages including the Barbican and Queen
Elizabeth Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam, the Esplanade in Singapore and the
Hong Kong Cultural Center. He has appeared at
major international festivals throughout North
America, Europe, India and Japan.
“How
can you play South Indian Carnatic music on a guitar?"¯ This is the question that was on
everyone's mind when Prasanna
daringly took to performing one of the world's
most ancient musical forms on one of the world's
most modern instruments - the electric guitar!
Prasanna has crafted a unique approach that
combines the subtlest of microtones and
elaborate ornamentation essential to Carnatic
music, and then spans the centuries by
skillfully incorporating ultra-modern jazz
melodies, greasy funk and stadium-rock
distortion. In a world studded with brilliant
guitarists, “Prasanna plays like nobody else on
the planet¯! As a guitarist and composer, Prasanna's prolific body of work is as diverse
as it is integrated. He has recorded over eleven
traditional Carnatic albums and several original
CDs including Be the Change and the highly
acclaimed Carnatic/Rock Hendrix tribute album
Electric Ganesha Land.
Prasanna is an
acclaimed film composer having scored for
feature films and the 2009 Oscar award winning
documentary film Smile Pinki. Prasanna has
worked regularly on multi-platinum Indian film
soundtracks for such top composers as Illayaraja
and Oscar winner A.R. Rahman. His orchestration
and arranging credits include the title score of
the Oscar nominated Bollywood film Lagaan.
Prasanna has a degree in Naval Architecture
from the prestigious Indian Institute of
Technology, Madras and an honors degree from the
famed Berklee College of Music in Boston from
where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. He has
performed with such diverse musicians as Joe
Lovano, Umayalpuram Sivaraman, Vijay Iyer, Dave
Douglas, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Victor Wooten,
Trilok Gurtu, Anthony Jackson, Airto Moreira,
Dr. T.K. Murthy, Omar Hakim, Vikku Vinayakram,
Jeff Coffin and others. Some of the top
international festivals at which Prasanna has
performed are the North Sea Jazz Festival,
Middelheim Jazz Festival, Festival Guitares Du
Monde, La Fete de la Musique, Les Orientales De
St. Florent Le Vieil, and the Festival Jazz En
Artois.
Prasanna is the President of
Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music, India's first
international college for contemporary Jazz,
Rock and World Music.
Together, as The
Raga Bop Trio, Steve Smith, George Brooks and
Prasanna create a musical form that is instantly
recognizable, rhythmically dynamic and
breathtakingly original.