Ima Ensemble

Tumma

Label: Eema Records Country: Canada

Toronto percussionist Debashis Sinha first release as the Ima Ensemble features the vocals of Toronto world music singers Jayne Brown and Sophia Grigoriadis.

"For many years known as a percussionist and composer with a number of Canada's premiere intercultural music pioneers, Sinha has begun to forge a name for himself in the world of audio, solo performance, and new media art.  His training under master drummers from various world percussion traditions from Cairo to Los Angeles inform his work and his exploration of the use of tradition as a tool for innovation.  This basic premise finds expression in his creative output through a wide variety of approaches and source material--- from sine waves to traditional percussion music to field recordings, and from motion graphics to raw video footage. Most often Sinha creates his works through a directed focus on distilling the elements of his source material into their component parts of light and sound.  To him, this distillation is an expression of his own South Asian heritage, a gesture that infuses the form of classical Indian music (with its elements of mindfulness and improvisation) with content created from his own experience growing up in/between cultures and his eclectic skill set as sound designer, video maker, and musician. Through presenting and dissecting source material he re-contextualizes our perceptions and brings to the fore our expectations about sound, identity and the role of diasporic communities.

Sinha's continuing musical practice and re-interpretation of himself as an artist comfortable working in various media have allowed him to realize projects and performances from St. John's, Newfoundland to Berlin, Germany.  He has been a recipient of grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Chalmers Foundation, which have allowed him to complete projects ranging from internet video installation to compositions for Taiko drummers.  He continues to perform as a percussionist on the concert stage with Maza Mezé, Ensemble Polaris, Maryem Tollar, Leela Gilday, and others.  Upcoming projects include major concerts at the Toronto Luminato Festival and CD recording with Berlin laptop musician Robert Lippok, with whom he has a regular duo, as well as 2 solo CDs, an audio and video score for Canadian dancer Peggy Baker, and a recording of New York composer Rhys Chatham's hour long 2 Gongs."-Debashis Sinha website