A man plays a guitar in a sun-dappled glade in Auroville. He sits under the trees, his instruments carefully balanced on mud and stones. His audience, a motley collection of dancers, artists and curious passers-by, gather around him on the sprightly green grass. For a setting so bohemian, the music is surprisingly structured: classical jazz guitar, with a sophisticated technique and deft improvisation.
Rotem Sivan’s impromptu one-hour concert at Aurolec arena on Sunday afternoon is held in typical Aurovillian style. It’s low-key and relaxed, with minimal publicity. Sivan, however, is no ordinary travelling musician.
After graduating from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University with a degree in classical composition, he relocated to New York City in 2008 to study at The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music, before releasing three albums.
The jazz guitarist and composer adds unexpected elements to his performance, attaching bells to his ankles in the style of a Bharatanatyam dancer. “I recently taped some new stuff with my guitar and I’m trying that out now. You are part of that experiment. Sorry,” he grins at the visibly delighted audience, before confidently launching into a feisty new piece of music.
Sivan’s first album, Enchanted Sun , was released in 2013. The next year he made For Emotional Use Only , which won critical acclaim. His latest album, A New Dance was launched in 2015.
Once the concert winds up, amid applause and multiple cups of piping-hot mint tea, Sivan talks about what brings him to India. A resident at the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) in Chennai, he will be teaching music there for three months. “I just got here last week and a friend suggested I play at Auroville this weekend,” he says, adding that he used the concert to experiment with juxtaposing Indian percussion and jazz guitar. “It’s not just about adding the bells, I’m also tapping on the guitar, into which I’ve installed a mic,” he says, adding that he’s recently started to learn Carnatic music at SAM. “Konnakol mainly, but also ragas.”
He intends to bring it all together in his music eventually. “Jazz guitar is an intricate language — the more you learn about it, the more you appreciate it. But I’m interested in making it interesting to people who don’t come from a jazz background,” he says.
