![]() |
Bishi Bhattacharya, typically known mononymously as Bishi, is a British, London-based, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, multimedia performer, producer, composer and DJ of Bengali heritage. She is the artistic director and co-founder of WITCiH, [1] The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, a platform to increase the visibility of women at the intersection of music, creative technology and STEM. [2] Bishi was first recognised in 2001 as the central DJ and 'face' of London's experimental underground nightclub, Kash Point.
Born in London to a Bengali family, musician, artist and performer Bishi was classically trained in piano and received voice training in both Hindustani and Western Classical styles. Her mother, Susmita Bhattacharya, [3] is an acclaimed classical Indian singer and expert in the music of Rabindranath Tagore.
Bishi received training in the sitar under Gaurav Mazumdar, a senior disciple of Ravi Shankar. Bishi's panoramic exploration of vocal music has reached as far as singing with The London Bulgarian Choir and drawing on ancient English folk music to exploring the extended techniques of Meredith Monk.
Bishi began her musical career in The Sound Storm – an improvised electro-acoustic performance art troupe led by London night club legend Matthew Glamorre and his longtime collaborator Richard Torry; two of the original members of Leigh Bowery's performance art band, Minty. [4] Whilst in her teens, she helped initiate various cult queer London nightclubs such as classical music soirée The Siren Suite and Kash Point, as an artist & DJ in residence. With creative partner Matthew Hardern, she has released two albums in collaboration: Nights at The Circus and Albion Voice.
Her first album Nights at the Circus was described as "Falling somewhere between M.I.A. and Simon and Garfunkel via a stint at music college,"[ citation needed ] with Bishi being hailed as "a welcome breath of hair." The album was performed in its entirety with the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra in June 2008 at LSO St Luke's. [5] Also in 2008 she was asked to join a tour of the English female singers 'The Daughters of Albion' alongside the likes of Norma Waterson and June Tabor. She has toured and collaborated with close friend Patrick Wolf and ex-Moloko singer Roisin Murphy. She appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on Friday 3 October, singing "Never Seen Your Face". [6] [7]
Media appearances include the BBC's Culture Show and Friday Night with Jonathan Ross . [8] She has attracted critical attention and was nominated for the 2008 South Bank Show Awards – the 'Times Breakthrough Award'. [9]
Bishi is characterised by her glamorous and extravagant stage appearance.[ citation needed ] Her stage commissions and live collaborators have included the London Symphony Orchestra, [10] the English National Opera, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, [11] the Whitechapel Gallery, [12] Joanna MacGregor, Nico Muhly, Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson. She appeared as a guest at the live premiere of Double Fantasy for Yoko Ono's Meltdown at the Royal Festival Hall in 2013. [13]
Bishi's live performances explore interactive multimedia and film. Albion Voice was featured in Julien Temple's film London The Modern Babylon . [14] Dia Ti Maria, featuring The Kronos Quartet, won best soundtrack for the Manish Arora film Holi Holy at ASVOFF 6: A Shaded View on Fashion Film 6. [15] Bishi featured as a vocalist in Richard Grayson's video installation 'Nothing can Stop us Now,' which consisted of the song "Stalin Wasn't Stallin", made famous by Robert Wyatt, arranged by composer Leo Chadburn. [16]
In 2018, National Sawdust commissioned Bishi to compose and premiere a new piece in New York for the opening of The FERUS Festival, which culminated in Bishi: The Good Immigrant, a song cycle composed for voice looper, sitar and electronics, co-produced with composer and sound artist Jeff Cook. The song cycle was inspired by The Good Immigrant, a collection of essays edited by Nikesh Shukla.[ citation needed ]
Other musical collaborators have included Anat Ben-David, with Bishi appearing as a vocalist in her opera Kairos. She was also one of the final collaborators of the Labour politician Tony Benn, who contributed spoken word to the single "Look The Other Way".[ citation needed ]
Bishi has also contributed Vocals to the Sean Lennon-composed soundtrack for the film Ava's Possessions and played sitar on the album Daphne and The Golden Chord, by Daphne Guinness, produced by Tony Visconti. She has recently supported opera punk-chanteuse Kristeen Young and Wolfgang Flür of legendary electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk.[ citation needed ]
She has also collaborated significantly to a number of pieces by composer Neil Kaczor, most notably "In Sleep", commissioned by the Science Gallery London. She arranged the Shakespeare Sonnet 43, "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see", for 13 voices. The live presentation utilised the sound of Bishi's brainwaves, recorded from a session conducted with the Evelina sleep clinic, at Guy's Hospital. In 2016, Bishi was commissioned by The Old Church, in Stoke Newington, to make music in response to an interactive wind harp, created by Output Arts. The result, Winds of Fate, has now been released a digital EP.[ citation needed ]
In March 2021, she performed "Don't Shoot the Messenger" on BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends . [17]
Bishi's third album 'Let My Country Awake' was released in 2021 on Gryphon Records.
André George Previn was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated trio pianist, a piano-accompanist to singers of standards, and pianist-interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also performed as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer of art music.
Eliza Amy Forbes Carthy, MBE is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson.
Anoushka Shankar is a British-American sitar player and music artist. She was the youngest and first woman to receive a British House of Commons Shield; she has had nine Grammy Awards nominations and was the first musician of Indian origin to perform live and to serve as a presenter at the ceremony. She performs across multiple genres and styles - classical and contemporary, acoustic and electronic.
Sharada Krishnamurthy, popularly known as Kavita Krishnamurthy or Kavita Subramaniam, is an Indian playback and classical singer. She has recorded songs in various Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Telugu, Odia, Marathi, English, Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Nepali, Assamese, Konkani, Punjabi and other languages. She is the recipient of four Filmfare Best Female Playback Singer Awards, and the Padmashri which she received in 2005. She was awarded a Doctorate for her contributions to Indian music by Bangalore-based Jain University in 2015. In 1999, she married noted violinist L. Subramaniam and resides in Bengaluru.
Nights at the Circus is a novel by British writer Angela Carter, first published in 1984 and the winner of the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel focuses on the life and exploits of Sophie Fevvers, a woman who is – or so she would have people believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg laid by unknown parents and ready to develop fully fledged wings. At the time of the story, she has become a celebrated aerialiste. She captivates the young journalist Jack Walser, who runs away with the circus and falls into a world that his journalistic exploits had not prepared him to encounter.
Kathryn Williams is an English singer-songwriter who to date has released 14 studio albums, written and arranged for a multitude of artists, and was nominated for the 2000 Mercury Music Prize.
Ustad Sultan Khan was an Indian sarangi player and classical vocalist belonging to Sikar Gharana. He was one of the founding members of the Indian fusion group Tabla Beat Science, with Zakir Hussain and Bill Laswell. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour, in 2010.
Shujaat Husain Khan is one of the most acclaimed North Indian musicians and sitar players of his generation. He belongs to the Imdadkhani gharana school of music. He has recorded over 100 albums and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album for his work with the band Ghazal with Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor. He also sings frequently. His style of sitar playing, known as gayaki ang, is imitative of the subtleties of the human voice.
All Angels were a British classical crossover group formed in 2006, consisting of Daisy Chute, Laura Wright, Rachel Fabri, Melanie Nakhla and actress Charlotte Ritchie.
The history of the sitar in jazz, that is the fusion of the sounds of Indian classical music with Western jazz, dates back from the late-1950s or early-1960s when musicians trained in Indian classical music such as Ravi Shankar started collaborating with jazz musicians such as Tony Scott and Bud Shank. Later jazz recordings containing sitar music include albums by Miles Davis, Alice Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Joe Harriott ,and Ornette Coleman.
Sarah Cahill is an American pianist based in the Bay Area. She has also worked as a writer on music and as a radio show host.
Simon Bookish is the stage name of Leo Chadburn, a British musician and composer known for his work in experimental, electronic, pop, and classical music. His music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 6 Music, and Resonance FM. Originally from Coalville, Leicestershire, he moved to London and trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1997 to 2001.
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian is a British composer, singer, and harper. She is considered one of today's leading emerging composers.
Donna McKevitt is an English composer based in London. She studied viola with Gustav Clarkson and voice with Linda Hirst and gained a BA Hons in music at Kingston Polytechnic.
John Henry Basil Mayer was an Indian composer known primarily for his fusions of jazz with Indian music in the British-based group Indo-Jazz Fusions with the Jamaican-born saxophonist Joe Harriott.
Suzana Ansar is an English singer, actress and television presenter of Bangladeshi descent.
Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan was an Indian sitar player. Khan received the national awards Padma Shri (1970) and Padma Bhushan (2006) and was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 1987.
Kalaivani Nagaraj, known professionally as Lady Kash, is a rapper/songwriter from Singapore who started her solo career professionally in 2007. Rapping fluently in English and Tamil, Lady Kash has worked with music composers including A. R. Rahman, Yuvan Shankar Raja, and Anirudh Ravichander. She launched her own company/label AKASHIK in 2013 and continues to beat out independent hip-hop music and videos, alongside working on film soundtracks occasionally. She has performed in various concerts around the globe including Switzerland, UK, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Dubai and India. In 2021, she was a participant in reality show by TV Network Zee Tamil and producers Banijay Asia, filmed and relayed from Tanzania, East Africa. In the final stage, she was forced to take a decision to exit, putting her health first as the makers of the show did not allow her equal time to rest as they did for other participants. She was instead told to continue participation as the test read negative, despite the COVID symptoms she had possessed for days.
Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra is a studio album by Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) conducted by André Previn. The concerto was premiered at London's Royal Festival Hall on 28 January 1971, and subsequently released in Britain and America.
Ujjayinee Roy is an Indian playback singer who has worked in the Indian film industry. Ujjayinee has worked on Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Assamese language films for musicians including A. R. Rahman, Bharadwaj, Sajid–Wajid, Illayaraja, Harris Jayaraj and Devi Sri Prasad.