Preview: UBS Soundscapes, LSO St Luke's, London
An explosion of sound as two worlds collide
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Your support makes all the difference.Every so often, the classical world falls hook, line, and sinker for a champion of music from the other side of the divide. Usually it's just a matter of packaging, rather than anything radical about their music: the world of crossover is governed by style rather than content. Judging by her recent South Bank Show "Breakthrough Award", and by the fact that the London Symphony Orchestra have invited her to join them in a crossover performance of songs from her latest CD, the singer-songwriter-DJ-multi-instrumentalist known as Bishi looks to be the latest in this line.
But the songs on that CD – Nights at the Circus, named after the famously wacky novel by the late Angela Carter – have a rueful worldliness that rings true to the raffish sphere she inhabits, as witness her ode to the 149 night bus, ferrying its cargo of drunks, tarts, and shift-workers from Stoke Newington to London Bridge. And the music's instrumental inventiveness puts it far above the usual pop fare. As an artist, you sense Bishi is for real.
In person she's as flamboyant as you'd expect, given that she's resident DJ at a West End club named Kashpoint that's famed for its Warholian excesses, but there's an endearing lack of pretension in her explanation of how she got to where she is. Born 25 years ago in Hammersmith to a singer who is still a star on the classical music circuit in Bengal, Bishi inherited her mother's musical voraciousness, which in her case meant learning the piano, bass guitar, ukulele, and sitar.
The invitation to collaborate with the LSO came out of the blue. "But as I see pop on a symphonic level, it's long been one of my ambitions to work with an orchestra, so this is a realisation of my dream." What's the main challenge? "Getting people from two musical worlds which are normally diametrically opposed to work together. Telling each side "You're not getting what you want, and you aren't either". So what's next? "A new album called Indian Skin, Albion Voice."
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