Bhumika released on September 9, 2018 
The Toronto Tabla Ensemble has nearly finished recording its sixth full length album. For the last 25 years, the Ensemble’s mission has been to present audiences with exciting contemporary music that draws from the North Indian Classical rhythmic system. While staying true to their original art form, the Ensemble has collaborated genres from across the world on mainstream stages and pushed boundaries to find musical and cultural similarities.
This project reflects the artistic director and album producer Ritesh Das’ recent compositional work which has a pronounced emphasis on the technical and energetic nature of the North Indian Classical rhythmic system while maintaining the contemporary context that has attracted their wide listener base. The Indian percussion instruments tabla, dholak, mridangam, and ghatam are played by the highly trained Ensemble members (Razak Pirani, Shamir Panchal, Nivethan Velauthapillai) while guest artists contribute further percussive and melodic components to develop the grandeur and fullness of the sound.
Six new pieces from the Ensemble’s repertoire have been recorded, all of which are composed by Ritesh Das and performed by the Toronto Tabla Ensemble. Furthermore, one original remix piece of past Ensemble repertoire will be created by associate producer, Gary Honess, who has experience as a professional DJ. Indian instruments will include sitar, sarod, and bansuri, Japanese Taiko (Kiyoshi Nagata), violin, Chinese Guzheng (Donald Quan), and kit drum (Nilan Chaudhuri). Nagata and Quan have both collaborated extensively with the Ensemble on recordings and in concerts while Chaudhuri, son of tabla maestro, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, has specialized knowledge of transcribing and performing classical tabla repertoire on drum kit.
All recording, editing, mixing, and mastering of the album is overseen by associate producer Gary Honess at Kuhl Muzik Studio in Toronto where the Ensemble’s last album Alankar was produced in 2008.
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