Adil & Vasundhara To Perform At Jazzmandu

Adil & Vasundhara

Besides being busy recording and producing their debut album Ampersand, guitarist Adil Manuel and vocalist Vasundhara Vidalur have become regular fixtures at music festivals. “We’ve performed at least 22 festivals in the past two years,” says Manuel.

They will next head to Kathmandu in November to perform at the annual jazz festival, Jazzmandu. “The line-up this year is killer,” says Manuel, “It’s such an honor to be there ”“ it’s that kind of a festival. There’s Tito Puente Jr [mambo legend Tito Puente’s son] and a whole lot of others.” The festival lineup also includes American jazz pianist and salsa star, Marlow Rosado, the Beat Kasteli Quartet from Switzerland and French jazztronica band Nojazz, who performed in Delhi earlier this year.

“Our country is definitely on the map as far as music is concerned. We’ve been lucky to play festivals abroad from the first year itself,” says Vidalur referring to festivals such as Tout le Monde Chante, a major music festival in France that the duo got to perform at in 2009, the year they got together. The vocalist, who has an incredible range and can pull off everything from R n B to jazz to soul, tells us that they’ve been really lucky with festivals abroad. “We’ve never been asked to whip out a tabla just because we’re from India,” she explains.

It was the first-ever Delhi Jazz Festival held in 2011 in association with Seher and the Indian Council For Cultural Relations that set things rolling, recalls Manuel. “There were about 12,000 people at Nehru Park for the festival,” says Manuel, “Where in India can one play to a crowd like that? We’ve come a long way since then.”

The Adil & Vasundhara Quartet will perform at Jazzmandu on November 3. More details on the festival here