ONE of France’s leading exponents of Indian music will soon be performing at The Fold in Bransford.

There will be a Samarpan Concert at the venue on June 1, from 8pm to 10.30pm, featuring Gilles Petit, Awantika Dubey and William Tooby, and they will perform “a trio of ragas, songs and dance”.

Gilles is one of France’s leading exponents of Indian music and Awantika has been performing since childhood, presenting music, songs and dance at national and international festivals.

In India she runs “Awantika Arts Centre” where she teaches singing and dancing to students from across the world.

As a child Gilles already had an irrepressible urge to sing and by the age of fourteen he had built his own guitar and started to compose his own songs. By sixteen he was singing in bars around Paris. As his musical development unfolded, Gilles studied other instruments. Eventually Gilles heard in Afghanistan “a voice whose resonance was so rich that it carried even outside without the aid of a microphone”.

And so began another journey.

The spokesman added: “Titled Samarpan, meaning devotion, the evening will feature Gilles’ Latest Work: ’Le Chant Du Corps’, the song of the body, which was performed to great acclaim at the Asia India Festival in Taiwan.

“This special composition will be performed by Gilles accompanied by Awantika Dubey on Vocal and William Tooby on Xarena which is a single stringed percussion instrument invented by Gilles.”

Awantika will also be singing Ragas based on traditional Indian classical music and Ghazals. A Ghazal being a poetic expression of the pain and beauty of love in spite of that pain.

William Tooby said “This will be an exceptional collaboration from different cultures all performed using the basic architecture Indian Classical Music. It went down very well in Taiwan and I am very happy that we are now performing it back home at the Fold.”

Further details at https://www.thefold.org.uk/whats-on/

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