World Music presents the KRONOS QUARTET & ASHA BHOSLE performing India Calling: Songs from R. D. Burman's Bollywood featuring special guests Wu Man and Zakir Hussain on Sunday, April 9, 7:30 pm at the Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston. Tickets are $75 (golden circle), $50, $40 and $30. For tickets and information call World Music (617) 876-4275 or buy online at www.WorldMusic.org.

From the fantastical land of India’s Bollywood comes this vibrant homage to the preeminent Indian movie composer, the late R. D. Burman. In more than 300 film scores, Burman entranced audiences with ever-surprising combinations of Indian classical and folk music, swing jazz, psychedelic rock, circus music and more. This remarkable concert features the Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet performing with the legendary Queen of Bollywood, singer Asha Bhosle. Kronos is also joined by longtime collaborators Wu Man (Chinese pipa) and Zakir Hussain (tabla), completing this musical masala of eras and cultures.

Rahul Dev Burman (1939-1994) was one of India’s most popular and influential Bollywood composers. In more than 300 film scores, Burman captivated audiences with melodies steeped in intrigue, festooned with jewels, and stained with tears and henna. Even separated from its original cinematic context, his music is suffused with a visual presence that transports listeners into a fantasyland. He created not only haunting tunes but genuinely complex music filled with unexpected changes of tack or shifts in tempo. Burman’s film career began in the 1950s, assisting his father, the famous singer and music director Sachin Dev Buwith, with films like Chalti ka Naam Gaadi and Kaagaz ke Phool. Burman’s first role as music director was in 1961s Chhote Newab, followed by his first hit movie, Teesri Manzil in 1966. By 1970, with films like Pyar ka Mausam and Aradhana to his credit, Burman had become one of Bollywood’s most popular and widely acclaimed composers. In 1981, Burman married singer Asha Bhosle after working with her on Piya tu Ab To Aajaa, Dum Maro Dum and Jaane Jaa. His last film, 1942- A Love Story, was released in 1994, the same year he died.

For much of his career, R.D. Burman collaborated with Asha Bhosle, the one singer whose chameleonic vocal qualities matched his own compositional daring. Bhosle is one of the most recorded artists in history, with more than 20,000 documented songs in 14 languages. Although she has done many non-film pieces as well, Bhosle is primarily known as a “playback” singer for films. Playback singers, popular in Bollywood films, pre-record songs which are then lip-synched by actresses or actors during filming. Bhosle has an incredible ability to sing in a variety of styles, such as rap, love songs, lusty cabaret, soulful ghazals and funky pop. On any scale of artistry or popularity, Ashaji (as she is respectfully and affectionately known) is among India’s most adulated and feted singers. For more than 50 years, her voice launched a thousand faces. Born in India in 1933, Bohsle made her Bollywood debut in 1957 in the O.P. Nayyar films Tumsa Nahin Dekha and Naya Daur, and her name was made famous in Western pop culture after the 1999 release of “Brimful of Asha” by the group Cornershop. Now over 70 years old, the superdiva of Indian music is perhaps the most recorded artist in the world.  

For more than 30 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington and John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola) and newest member Jeffrey Zeigler (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 40 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning hundreds of works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos' work has also garnered numerous awards, including a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and "Musicians of the Year" (2003) from Musical America.

Since the ensemble's origins in 1973, Kronos has built a compellingly eclectic repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartok, Shostakovich, Webern), contemporary composers (Sofia Gubaidulina, Arvo Part, Alfred Schnittke), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), and artists from even farther a field (rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Pakistani vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn). In addition to composers, Kronos counts many artists from around the world among its regular collaborators, including the renowned American soprano Dawn Upshaw; Mexican pop-rockers Cafe Tacuba; the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks; the unbridled British cabaret trio, the Tiger Lillies; among many others. Kronos has performed live with icons such as Allen Ginsberg, Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, Betty Carter and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by such diverse talents as singer-songwriters Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traore, Joan Armatrading and Texas yodeler Don Walser.

Inspired by Burman and Bhosle, Kronos ventures into novel instrumental territory with India Calling: Songs from R. D. Burman's Bollywood. Produced by quartet founder David Harrington and released on Nonesuch records, the recording broke new ground in many more ways than any Kronos project before it. Under Harrington’s direction, Kronos fell wholeheartedly into capturing the sound of surprise that characterizes Burman’s music, augmenting the quartet’s acoustic sound with keyboards, gongs, cymbals, mouth percussion, and more.  Instead of commissioning arrangements, Kronos used Burman’s recordings as musical models or templates, building each song layer by layer, using different techniques each time. The recording has been nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album. It has also received a nomination for a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in the "Culture-Crossing" category.

World Music is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency which also receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.   

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