Reviews

The Impro Show
Nicholas Williams on the Shiva Nova ensemble at the Purcell Rooms.
The Independent, excerpt

The Musicians of Shiva Nova have been creating their own performance traditions since the ensemble was founded five years ago to cross boundaries between Asian and European. This summer, jazz improvisation and African drumming were added to their programme, and featured at the second of two Purcell Room recitals.

Gary Carpenter's caberet-style The Trouble with Geraniums, a commission and world premiere, provided a surreal context of nine nonsense poems by Mervyn Peake.

Surprises like this can be expected at a Shiva Nova concert. When nothing is what it seems, anything is possible; and in the case of the Carpenter, this included outrages sitar riffs against piano vamps in the title song and tabla exchanging pleasantries with cello and flute in I cannot give the reasons. There was even a hint of Puccini in the tabla plus sitar plus synthesizer grouping of the Interlude.

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