London, A brand-new Bollywood orchestra is all set to curate a regular series of performances to bring iconic Hindi film melodies alive on stage in the UK, with a talented ensemble of artists in homage to some of India’s best-known musicians. London Bollywood Orchestra will kick off with its inaugural show on October 5 at Wilton’s Music Hall in east London, a historic venue dating back to the 1850s and often serving as a film set. It has been chosen as an ideal setting for singers Rekha and Navin Kundra to croon along with a talented 15-piece orchestra composed of a diverse range of instruments from tabla and dholak to flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, guitars and violins.
“We wanted a diverse show which gives us a span of decades and a span of styles, with music from the 1940s right up to the present day,” Tim Pottier, the music director of the new project told PTI. “When you are performing live music, everything is spontaneous, almost like living on the edge. The old Bollywood tracks used to have that same nervous energy because they were often recorded in a very short time with a small number of microphones but hundreds of performers.
So, the London Bollywood Orchestra will be bringing some of that everything-is-alive-right-now magic to stage,” he said. The new project marks a very natural progression for the Belgium-born London-based musician, who worked with A.R.
Rahman in the early noughties on his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra con.