Sheema Mukherjee – Sheema (Vinyl) with USB stick

£12.00

The “original sitar girl” Sheema Mukherjee wields her sitar deftly, with a certainty and coolness borne from a lifetime of honing her craft.

Sheema started playing the sitar at the age of eight, and was classically trained by her beloved uncle, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. Growing up, her childhood was split between India and England and she took advantage of the myriad of musical avenues open to her. Her eclectic and far-reaching musical influences are responsible for the rich tapestry of Eastern and Western sounds that make up her unique back catalogue.

An accomplished and versatile musician, Sheema has a sparkling, shape shifting quality, slipping from one genre to another with elegance and ease. Whether exploring the foothills of Darjeeling, composing or performing or inspiring an exotic fragrance, she is “The Original Sitar Girl”

She has composed and worked alongside many esteemed artists and organisations including Sir John Tavener, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtney Pine and Bobby McFerrin.

Label: ECC100 – 001
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Memory Stick, MPEG-4 Video, WAV, Album
Country: UK
Released: 2014
Genre: Folk, World, & Country

Tracklist
A1 Slash Sitar 4:10
A2 Sikkim Girls 4:59
A3 Street Spirit
Arranged By – Sheema Mukherjee
Written-By – Radiohead
Arranged By – Sheema Mukherjee
Written-By – Radiohead
4:30
A4 Lucid & Just 5:33
A5 Little Dragon
Lyrics By – Ameer Khusro
Lyrics By – Ameer Khusro
4:40
A6 SitSka 2:14
A7 L’amitié
Arranged By – Sheema Mukherjee
Written-By – Françoise Hardy
Arranged By – Sheema Mukherjee
Written-By – Françoise Hardy
2:52

B1 Morning Celeste
Mixed By – Geoff Webb
Mixed By – Geoff Webb
7:29
B2 A 1000 Layer Cake 7:08
B3 Mrs Moo 5:09
B4 Saraswati Waltz 6:10
B5 Morning Reprise 3:52
B6 Bit God 2:33

Credits
Bass – Nigel Dale (tracks: A2, A5, 2, 5), Richard Evans (3) (tracks: B5, 12)
Drums, Percussion – Ged Lynch
Guitar – Nigel Dale
Horns – Kick Horns
Mixed By – Simon Massey (tracks: A1 to A7, B2 to B6, 1 to 7, 9 to 13)
Ney – Serkan Alkan (tracks: A4, 4)
Producer – Geoff Webb, Serkan Alkan, Sheema Mukherjee, Simon Emmerson, Simon Massey
Sitar, Bass, Vocals, Tambura – Sheema Mukherjee
Strings – John Metcalfe
Tabla – Manjit Singh Rasiya (tracks: B1, 8)
Vocals – Jackie Oates (tracks: A2, 2)
Written-By – Sheema Mukherjee (tracks: A1, A2, A4 to A6, B1 to B6, 1, 2, 4 to 6, 8 to 13)

Notes
Issued in a gatefold sleeve.
Tracks A7, 7 wrongly listed as “L’amite”

Barcode and Other Identifiers
Barcode: 5 060214 040297

Description

“Classically trained but a fusioneer by nature, sitarist Sheema Mukherjee has played with trance troupe Transglobal Underground and folk radicals the Imagined Village among others. This solo debut (vinyl/MP4 only) draws from her palette with panache. Slash Sitar is a showboating rock thrash (air sitar, anyone?); Sikkim Girls comes drenched in Bollywood strings; Morning Celeste is a dreamy neoclassical raga; and the driving Little Dragon sounds as though John Lee Hooker had mastered the sitar. More unexpected are sweetly sung covers of Radiohead and Françoise Hardy and playful evocations of 60s pop (Mrs Moo) and sodden samosas on an English beach (Bit God). A charming, altogether singular creation.” – Neil Spencer 23rd August 2014 The Observer, Music

Sheema Mukherjee, established sitar player and composer; a regular in Transglobal Underground playing sitar and electric bass; a key member in The Imagined Village project; a formidable collaborator with internationally renowned artists from many genres.

Sheema Mukherjee absorbed North Indian classical music and the western tradition side-by-side, studying sitar and Indian classical music under the tutelage of her uncle, the Late Pandit Nikhil Banerjee and then with the Late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Brought up between Britain and India, she has a rich background to draw on in her own compositions and collaborations. Sheema works across many styles and genres from eastern and western classical music to jazz, pop and dance music.

She has collaborated with internationally renowned artists such as Sir John Tavenor, Martin Carthy, Bobby Mcferrin, Boris Grebenshikov, Natacha Atlas, Noel Gallagher & Cornershop, Mercan Dede, the Bulgarian Folk singer Yanka Rupkina. Another significant collaboration is with UK saxophonist Courtney Pine and Sheema has been featured on his albums Back In The Day and Devotion and was a guest artist on the ‘On Track’ tour – a project for the UK Commonwealth Games.

Sheema has toured the world with a variety of ensembles and key performances include The World Music Festival (Chicago), Montreux Jazz Festival and the Olympia-Halle (Munich), supporting Jimmy Page and Robert Plant throughout their European tour (1998), the Olympics Arts Festival for Sydney 2000 and also makes regular appearances at WOMAD (UK) with her own ensembles.

A versatile and creative musician, Sheema Mukherjee  is evolving both as a composer and as a collaborator. Recent work has included an Indian Classical performance for Elton John’s Black Tie & Tiara Ball, an improvisation with Australian recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey in Westminster Abbey for The Queen on Commonwealth Day, and a creative development role in composition and song writing in Beijing, Hong Kong and Gateshead as part of the PRS Foundation and Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong Creative Exchange Project. Larger scale work has included composition for full orchestra, for theatre, including Wuthering Heights (Tamasha), The Cornershop Project (Black Country Touring & Foursight), West Yorkshire Playhouse (Northern Exposure).



In addition to her composition and live work, Sheema is a rigorous and disciplined teacher and has conducted many workshops in improvisation and composition as well as classes focusing on her instruments (both eastern and western) in the UK and abroad.

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