Check out the highlights and audience reactions from Naseebo Lal at Coltson Hall. A sold out performance back in September!

Jyotsna Srikanth and Bollywood Brass Band at St George’s Bristol presented a stunning collaboration on Sunday 30 October.

Mixing funky brass, drums and virtuosic violin, they performed music to accompany wonderful Bollywood film sequences on the screen above them.

The concert, co-presented by Asian Arts Agency and St George’s Bristol, is part of a UK tour promoting the new album Carnatic Connection. You can find out more about the album and the tour here.

We have uploaded some photos from the night on our Facebook page.

Torchbearers of the Qawwali tradition, the Rizwan-Muazzam group from Pakistan will bring their stunning interpretation of classic Sufi texts to the UK in March 2017, on a national tour managed and produced by Asian Arts Agency.

Tour dates (more to be announced) – for tickets, click on venue:

Wed 22 Mar  Luton Library Theatre, Luton (tickets on sale soon)
Thu 23 Mar   St George’s, Bristol
Sat 25 Mar    Howard Assembly Room, Leeds
Sun 26 Mar   The Sage, Gateshead
Mon 27 Mar  The Barbican, London
Thu 30 Mar   Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham

Rizwan and Muazzam have been performing together since the 1990s. Their incredible performances at festivals around the world, including WOMAD UK, are rare and transcendent experiences and have seen them develop a devoted worldwide following. Performing songs that use hypnotic vocal repetition to induce a state of ecstasy, the brothers’ soaring voices are backed by a gharana, an ensemble of harmonium and tabla accompanied by rhythmic handclaps.

The living legacy of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

When legendary Pakistani qawwali maestro Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, popularly known as “Shahenshah-e-Qawwali”, died in 1997, his family’s six-century musical tradition did not end. The legacy of qawwali, a form of devotional music popular in South Asia, was passed to his nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam, exceptional singers who carry on the Sufi tradition of musical devotion and exaltation.

2017 will mark the 20^th anniversary of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s death. The Rizwan-Muazzam UK tour seeks to remember and pay tribute to the ‘Shahenshah-e-Qawwali’ – king of kings – by bringing his nephews, who are the living legacy of his music, to audiences around the UK, as part of the 70^th anniversary of the formation of Pakistan and the Independence of India.

Jaswinder Singh, Director of Asian Arts Agency, said of the tour:

“We are delighted to be bringing Rizwan and Muazzam to UK audiences in 2017, as part of our touring programme. Rizwan and Muazzam are arguably the finest sufi musicians in the world and we are sure that audiences in the UK will have a great time enjoying their incredible live performances. The Agency is one of the leading touring producers of contemporary Asian music in the UK and this tour further strengthens our expanding touring work.”

Rizwan-Muazzam Group said:

“We are all really very excited about our UK Tour next year and looking forward to meeting and performing in front of our fans and qawwali loving audiences. We will be following in the footsteps of our great Uncle and Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, he loved performing and meeting his fans in the UK and we will be paying our humble respects to him with a very special show for qawwali fans in the 20^th anniversary year since his passing.”

Tickets for all dates in the tour will go on sale soon.

Jaswinder (the Agency’s Director) and Steve (the Agency’s Events Co-ordinator) are flying out today, 19 October, to meet and network with artists and organisations from around the world over the next 5 days, at Womex – the world music expo – taking place in Spain from 19 – 23 October.

This year, for the first time, the Agency is also excited to be supporting two artists with bursaries, as part of the Agency’s international programme. This will enable them to attend Womex to network and establish new international opportunities.

The artists being supported this year are Shama Rahman and Bindi Sagoo. Find out more about these talented artists via their prospective websites.

Prolific Pakistani folk singer Naseebo Lal and the Legends Band performed to a sold out audience at Colston Hall on Friday 30 September.

It was a fantastic evening of music. Do check out our photos from the night – we have shared an album of photos on our Facebook page.

The evening also included a wonderful pre-show foyer performance from Durga Ramakrishnan, a South Indian Carnatic vocalist and vainika from Chennai.

We were delighted to complete the Barmer Boys debut UK tour successfully in September 2016, with performances at Into the Wild Festival (28/08/16), Burnley Arts Theatre (02/09/16), Moseley Folk Festival (03/09/16), Bristol Folk House (04/09/16) and London Rich Mix (06/09/16).

The tour  was a new experience for audiences across the country, with traditional Rajasthan sufi music blended with beat boxing and contemporary sounds. The name Barmer derives from the band’s home district in Rajasthan, based close to the Pakistan border. As a result the Barmer Boys have developed a mind-blowing sound, which is blended from many different cultures, making them utterly unique.

“If you get the chance you must watch these guys live, they are phenomenal!” Noreen Khan – BBC Asian Network Presenter.

“I loved the different cultures that we’re brought together by their music” – Bristol Folk house audience member

“The best band of the Festival, absolutely amazing!” – Moseley Folk Festival audience member

Please enjoy our pictures and video content from the tour here.

On March 18th 2016 we brought two Classical Indian Contemporaries to St George’s concert hall in Bristol: Roopa Panesar and Jytosna Srikanth. It was a very special night, with audiences raving about the beautiful music and fascinating performances from both Roopa and Jyotsna.

Roopa and Jyotsna approach Indian Classical Music in very different ways; Roopa Panesar follows the North Indian tradition on sitar, while Jyotsna Srikanth plays South Indian Carnatic style on her violin. Before the show, the two met up in a brief Q&A with the audience, discussing how these different influences play out in a fascinating conversation. They also discussed the ways they can collaborate: both with each other, and with other styles of music. Roopa Panesar has played sitar with a wide range of other performers, including Talvin Singh during our Bombay Talkies project, while Jyotsna Srikanth’s new project is with the Bollywood Brass Band.

One audience member asked if she would ever consider collaborating with a Western pop musician. “Yes,” Jyotsna said immediately, “I’m waiting for Adele to call.”

The show itself was a breathtaking experience, with Jyotsna taking the audience through a range of different pieces and concepts, and Roopa Panesar playing beautiful ragas on her sitar. At the end, as explained in their earlier Q&A, the two joined in song along with both their percussionists to play a jugalbandi: a set together at the end of the show, sitar and Carnatic violin working together to create a moving finale.

Some audience comments included:

“Superlative… sublime… It was very good!”

“Such talented musicians. Wonderfully evocative sound.”

“Brilliant – mesmerising – happy! – transporting…”

It was a very special night. Check out the videos below:

The UK’s Dhol Foundation completed a successful 8 date tour of North America in September 2016, managed by Asian Arts Agency.

We showcased the Dhol Foundation earlier this year at the selectively juried Globalfest event in New York as part of our International Showcasing Programme. This showcasing opportunity led to several other performances at prominent US venues such as the Kennedy Center, Washington DC and House of Blues in Boston.

As a result, The Dhol foundation returned this September to embark on its debut North American tour, with performances across the Mid-West through Des Moines, Madison, Bloomington to the East Coast through New York City, Washington DC, Toronto and Boston.

US audiences loved the Dhol Foundation’s incredible bhangra-style rhythm explosion, mixing dhol drum routines, pounding bass, wicked guitar and tabla.

Tour dates – September 2016:

Wed 14  Cedar Rapids, IA @ Landfall Festival
Thu 15   Des Moines, IA @ Des Moines Social Club
Fri 16  Madison, WI @ Madison World Music Festival
Sat 17 Bloomington, IN @ Lotus Fest
Thu 22  NYC @ Drom
Fri 23 DC @ Tropicalia
Sat 24 Toronto @ Small World Festival
Sun 25  Boston @ The Sinclair

Check out a short video from the tour here.

More photos and video from the tour will be shared on our Facebook page soon.

What an incredible action-packed year 2015 was for us at Asian Arts Agency!

Starting in February, sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan and his sons Amaan and Ayaan delighted audiences with several UK shows. We had a busy summer festival season featuring Indo-Canadian songwriter Kiran Ahluwalia at Greenbelt and Shambala, the fantastic Swami at Bristol Harbour Festival, and the eclectic New York dhol ‘n’ brass band Red Baraat at WOMAD!

We also held an educational Punjabi song and dance workshop in Bath with Bhangra dance group 4×4, and brought crowds together on the streets of Bristol with some outstanding performances by the Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band as part of Make Sunday Special.

We rolled on into autumn with more Kiran Ahluwalia, an intimate show with Soumik Datta, and a hugely successful bumper UK tour of Pakistani Sufi music legend Sain Zahoor! The end of the year was topped off by the launch of our new music night Aadhunik in Bristol and London featuring the ‘Ambassador of Bhangra’ DJ Rekha, world-renowned The Dhol Foundation and BBC Radio star Bobby Friction!

We hope your year was as wonderful as ours, and we’ve got lots for you to look forward to in 2016!

This month we’re delighted to be working with The Dhol Foundation again to take them over to New York City for GlobalFest, before embarking on tour of the US East coast. We also can’t wait for our event in March at St George’s (Bristol) featuring an Indian classical double bill of Roopa Panesar and Jyotsna Srikanth – it’s sure to be an evening to remember!

We’ve got plenty of other things in the works too, stay tuned for more exciting events coming up…

Check out the videos below for some of our highlights of 2015!

Earlier this Autumn, Asian Arts Agency brought Sufi maestro Sain Zahoor over from Pakistan on a tour of the UK, spanning an array of seven cities up and down the country. His busy tour produced a number of sold-out dates and was hosted by venues of varying sizes, from the grand Symphony Hall in Birmingham to the intimate Burnley Arts Centre.

This tour was a huge success for us, with enraptured audiences and a lot of press attention, and we were delighted with the country’s response to this truly special musician.

Despite spending most of his life as a street musician playing in temples and shrines across Pakistan, Sain seemed perfectly at home on the stage when he graced the UK shores this autumn, spinning around while adorned in elaborate robes and colourful tassels. Audiences around the country sang, clapped, and danced along to his unique style of Sufi music.

The tour kicked off in late September at The Barbican in London, where Sain played alongside Qawwali singer Faiz Ali Faiz to an audience of almost 2000 people. He then moved on to a dancing sold-out crowd at Bristol’s Colston Hall, and to packed audiences in Birmingham and Leeds.

He continued his journey around the country with another sold-out show in Burnley, and then played to over 1000 people in Bradford as part of the Saif Ul Maluk festival, before finishing off at the Lakeside Arts centre in Nottingham.

His audiences had plenty to say about his spiritual presence:

‘Intense, insightful and meditative’

‘Brilliant’

‘I enjoyed it so much I was moved to tears’

‘Surreal, amazing, words cannot describe how spiritually healing it was’

‘Absolutely fantastic! Wonderful rhythms and amazing lungs’

Watch our video highlights of Sain Zahoor’s fantastic tour below: