Arjun Verma

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Review:

This is the hundredth and twenty-fourth in a series of special Jazz on the Tube reviews of live stream performances.

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Arjun Verma began studying the sitar when he was five (his father Roop Verma was a disciple of Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar) and he studied with Khan for eight years.

While he has become a master of Indian classical music, Verma is also interested in playing his sitar in other idioms of music, including improvised jazz.

This special LiveStream from Sept. 24, 2020 is billed as “Improvisations in Jazz and Indian Classical Music.”

On his duets with George Brooks (who is heard on tenor, bass clarinet and a little bit of piano), Verma sometimes emulates a guitar but in his own way while Brooks (whose bass clarinet playing is quite haunting) not only holds his own but challenges the sitarist.

This is a memorable and unique set of melodic and sometimes hypnotic music that may expand one’s idea of what the sitar can do in the right hands.

– Scott Yanow