Eminent musician Bickram Ghosh has joined hands with Grammy Award winner Ricky Kej to perform at the Republic Day event in Delhi. In their first ever collaboration, the duo will create a musical magnum opus to celebrate 75 years of India’s Independence and 500 dancers will perform live to this music on January 26.
Said Ricky, "I have listened to Bickram's music for many years and become a fan of him. He effortlessly collaborates in various genres. Even though he is a classical musician, he is a fantastic producer of contemporary genres. It was an honor working with him, and learning from him in the process. He is super fast with ideas, and is equally fast at executing them.”
Ricky said both Ghosh and him were working remotely on this project. Even though Covid has forced musicians to work remotely, this is not something new for Ricky and Ghosh since both of them have been accustomed to working remotely with global musicians for a very long time.
Ghosh came up with ideas, recorded them and sent them to Ricky.
“I would work further on them with musicians in Bengaluru and send them back to Bickram. So there were a lot of to and fro between us and the end result is something we both are truly proud of. Bickram was an absolute joy to work with. The pandemic has hit the music industry and all the artists hard. The music industry is extremely dynamic and different professionals in the industry rely on each other,” said Ricky.
As the third wave has already hit the country, performing artists, production companies, event management companies, sound engineers, recording studios and everyone else involved have been stuck in limbo at the moment. So artists have to adapt to the situation instead of waiting for the pandemic to end.
“It's all about adapting to the times and our surroundings, because no matter what pandemic hits us, music will never leave our lives. We just have to find the right way to disseminate the music to our audiences. We as musicians will never stop expressing ourselves through our music,” said Ricky.
Ghosh said, "I have adored Ricky’s work for a while now. When I heard his Grammy - winning project Winds of Samsara, I was floored. Ricky as a composer has a wonderful facet—he has a system’s view—a very rare quality in a composer. His international work has made us Indians proud. It was an honour to work with him.”
According to him, it was a seamless experience for the duo.
“Working remotely—he is in Bangalore and I am in Kolkata—in our respective studios, we didn’t have the luxury of discussing things face to face. However, we worked wonderfully well in consultation with each other over the phone and through sharing files. We soon realized we were perfectly in sync in the way we visualized the music. We kept an eye on the patriotic fervor that needed to come through. We also wanted to showcase the depth and variety of Indian music and yet make the sound powerful, exciting and with a youth connection,” said Ghosh.
When physical performances were literally stopped during the pandemic, Ghosh started working double time in his studio. He said as an artist one must reinvent according to the situation.
“Besides performances, I also work as a composer. I was lucky to have scored for a bunch of films during this period as well as come out with some albums which were great fun to work on. The year 2022 will hopefully be a much better year in terms of physical performances because I personally don’t enjoy performing virtually without an audience. Hopefully, the world will open up and we will be able to go back to performing live soon again."
