MUMBAI: Prolific collaborator and sitar maestro Purbayan Chatterjee on August 18 released a second single, ‘Sukoon (Catharsis)’ –featuring the legendary tabla virtuoso Ustad Zakir Hussain – from his upcoming collaborative album, Unbounded - Abaad.

The album reflects not only Chatterjee’s mastery of Indian classical music but also what he calls “his love story with jazz”, and the single ‘Sukoon (Catharsis)’ is illustrative of that interplay.

Unbounded - Abaad will release on the UK-based, South Asian-focused music platform and label Sufiscore, and will be available worldwide on September 10. You can pre-save the album here.

Sukoon (Catharsis)

The musicians featured on Unbounded - Abaad are many but few as decorated as tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain, long-time Pat Metheny drummer Antonio Sanchez and Snarky Puppy bassist and founder Michael League – Chatterjee’s collaborators on ‘Sukoon (Catharsis)’.

Swiftly shifting colour and mood, ‘Sukoon (Catharsis)’ is a marriage of ghazal and blues that juxtaposes the awe-inspiring jazz vocal stylings of Grammy-nominated Croatian-Ameircan jazz artist and composer Thana Alexa – regarded as one of the finest vocalists of this generation – and Hindustani vocals of Gayatri Asokan.

Composed in collaboration between Chatterjee and Thana, ‘Sukoon (Catharsis)’ also sees Hussain, Sanchez and League exhibit a tremendous rhythm section hook-up alongside formidable sitar work by the Indian maestro in a song that celebrates feminine energy.

Thana, who co-produced Live From Our Living Rooms – the world’s first fully livestreamed jazz festival in April last year soon after pandemic brought the world to a screeching halt – was thankful for a project that ‘enabled connection in a year of isolation’.

“‘Sukoon (Catharsis)’ is a true blending of musical, geographical and emotional worlds and is a beautiful project that brought people together from all over the world through the universal language of music,” says Thana.

On this song, like throughout the album, there’s a stunning degree of cohesion as the ensemble – also featuring Nakul Chugh (keys), Carmen Staaf (piano), cellist Emanuel Keller, violist Anna Stromer and violinist Bengisu Gökçe – execute in unison parts of blazing speed and high difficulty with an effortless natural feeling.

“To have an all-star cast bringing the vision of a song to life is the matter of dreams,” says Chatterjee, before adding, “Thana has beautifully co-written this song with me and her arrangements and production take the listener from the intricately embellished world of ghazals to the intelligently yet subliminally harmonised soundscape of jazz.”

Unbounded - Abaad will be Sufiscore’s sophomore release.