“With a last concert at the Umeå Jazz Festival Beches Indian Brew came to a successful end“
We started in Chennai
In december 2015 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.
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 onkhanjira 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.
In August 2017 an album of live recordings from the Swedish tour was released.
The Beches Indian Brew album has received a lot of attention and fine reviews:
In English: 20170816 Salt Peanuts – Eyal Hareuveni http://salt-peanuts.eu/record/bengt-berger-beches-brew/20170906 United Mutations https://united-mutations.blogspot.se/2017/09/beches-brew-beches-indian-brew.html
In Swedish: 20171017 Lira http://www.lira.se/mangskiftande-uppvisning-av-beches-utvidgade-gang/
20171017 Orkesterjournalen http://orkesterjournalen.com/wordpress/?p=12706
20170826 DN 4 http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/skivrecensioner/beches-brew-beches-indian-brew/?print=true
20170828_Peter Sjöblom–Mono http://monomagasin.se/nyheter/beches-indian-brew-beches-indian-brew/
20170900 DIG http://www.digjazz.se/Diggat.html#IndianBrew
In Norweigian: 20170917 Tor Hammeröhttp://torhammero.blogg.no/1505675556_herlig_brygg.html
In Polish: 20170831 Dioni Piątkowski ERA JAZZU http://jazz.pl/beches-brew-beches-indian-brew-country-eastern-records/
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 easily found material for an album release.
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:
“Dagar, Djur” from the album, filmed at the Stockholm concert:
But there is a lot more documentation.
VIDEOS, BROADCAST, PHOTOS, REVIEWS, ARTICLES:
VIDEOS:
Congo Square from the Beches Indian Brew album
Dagar, Djur from the Beches Indian Brew 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
More videos at the Country & Eastern YouTube channel
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:
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.
