Rini Kicks Off Multi-City Moon Drops India Tour This Week

Just over a year since her last run of shows in the country, New York-based violinist, vocalist and composer Rini aka Harini Raghavan and her band will return to India for the six-city Moon Drops India Tour, starting Sept. 20 in Bengaluru.

After Bengaluru, the tour makes its way to Chennai (Sept. 21), Mumbai (Sept. 22), New Delhi (Sept. 25), Gurugram (Sept. 27), Kochi (Sept. 28) and ends in Hyderabad (Sept. 29). In between, Rini will also conduct a workshop at Global Music Institute on Sept. 26.

Delhi NCR and Kochi are two new stops on the tour, put together in partnership with Chennai-based company Quriosity. Opening acts include singer-songwriters like Nichesluck in Bengaluru and Damini Bhatla in Hyderabad, plus Yazhi the Band in Chennai and Fluorescent Forest in Kochi. In Chennai, Rini will be joined by singer-songwriter Shakthisree Gopalan, who appeared on the song “Magizhini.”

There were inquiries and demands for more shows as well, according to the artist, but her tour is “already pretty set now.” She adds, “We don’t have room to add more but we really, really appreciate everyone who has reached out and all the love from folks who follow us and our music. It definitely inspires us to tour more and record more music.”

Rini is joined by Malaysian guitarist Andrew Cheng, Luxembourg-based bassist Achal Murthy, Israeli saxophonist Shahar Amdor, with drummers Ranajoy Das and Maxime Cholley taking turns behind the kit in different cities. Rini says about the lineup, “When I started planning the tour we had some logistical conflicts with my team from last time based in the U.S. (including some amazing tours some of them are on, like Josh Plotner who is on the North American tour of Avatar: The Last Airbender Live in Concert!). So I decided to reach out to my older collaborators who had moved out of the US – like Achal Murthy from Luxembourg and Ranajoy Das from Delhi – both of whom have played on my first two EPs.”

Of the artists joining Rini’s band on tour, only Cheng has been part of the act’s previous India tour in early 2023. This time around, the Moon Drops tour takes its name from Rini’s song “Moon Thuli,” released in December 2023. “Moon Thuli” translates to “moon drop” and originally took inspiration from a Latin term, referenced in Macbeth by Shakespeare. “To me it was also a fresh metaphor for love across space and time and I used it in the song to express that. It’s also something magical much like the synths and ambient sounds I use in all my tracks and I felt like it symbolized what this tour would bring – an immersive magical experience of Indian classical music with jazz and electronica,” Rini adds.

The setlist on tour also includes recent releases like “Telisi Rama” (that Rini describes as “a re-imagined arrangement of a traditional Carnatic Krithi by Thyagaraja”) and “Kapi in Rio,” a Carnatic-meets-Latin music crossover tune that was released on Sept. 12. “There are more fun tunes that I have added with audience interaction components (claps, scats etc.) and I can’t wait to test these out,” she adds.

Following the tour, Rini will appear on The American Patchwork Quartet’s album and as a Recording Academy voting member, plans to hear more albums up for consideration and release another single in November. The upcoming song will feature Lithuanian vocalist Simona Smirnova and Portuguese artist Manuel. “I am busy planning my 2025 shows for my project – including a big show in Philadelphia in collaboration with the dance group Usiloquy,” Rini says.

Get tickets for Rini’s Moon Drops India Tour here.