Saturday 30 December 2017

A busman's holiday to Barnard Castle for visiting musicians

A VISIT to Barnard Castle for Indian musicians Rila Banerjee and Sumith Ramachandran has been something of a busman’s holiday.

Rila is the sister of Old Well Inn landlady Rima Chatterjee, so as well as catching up, she and husband Sumith have been giving customers a taste of their music.

They played a selection of seasonal standards on Christmas Eve which feature on an album released in their homeland.

The duo also planned to take part in this week’s open mic jam session before concluding their trip with a New Year’s Day performance, featuring some of their original work.

Ms Banerjee was born and bred in Calcutta, while Mr Ramachandran is from the south Indian state of Kerala.

Both professional musicians, they have been performing together since meeting 11 years ago.

Mr Ramachandran describes their style as jazz fusion.

“I have played all types of Indian music – Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi – I have done it all.

“As I have got older, my tastes have changed a lot, from hard rock to jazz fusion.”

Ms Banerjee added: “I was brought up on country and folk music. It is only since I met Sumith that jazz has emerged.”

Mr Ramachandran plays guitar and keyboards and is a programmer and arranger of music, while Ms Banerjee is a singer/songwriter.

They recorded their album of Christmas music while working on new original material, which they say is three or four songs short of a new album.

“The challenge was to do the Christmas songs differently and make it interesting,” said Mr Ramachandran

They first visited the Old Well, which has been run by Rima and husband Roy for the past three years, last year.

“We came over in October 2016 and people seemed to like what we did. This is like playing in someone’s living room,” added Ms Banerjee.

Rila and Sumith will be performing from 4pm on New Year’s Day.

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