Folk, Jazz etc: Simon Thacker, guitarist

Published on Tuesday 5 July 2011 11:38

TAKE one eclectically minded classical guitarist from East Lothian, grant him charge of an ensemble comprising two Indian virtuosi on violin and tabla drums, one of Scotland's leading string quartets, a Scottish-based Brazilian jazz bassist and a cross-genre percussionist and, rather than the cultural car cash one might fear, the result is music of sinuous beauty.

The Nava Rasa Ensemble, formed by guitarist Simon Thacker, has just released its debut CD, Nada-Ananda (on Slap the Moon Records), combining the disparate talents of Thacker, an established figure on the UK classical guitar scene, Jyotsna Srikanth on Indian violin, Sarvar Sabri on tabla, bassist Mario Caribe, percussionist Iain Sandilands and the Edinburgh Quartet.

The album takes its title from the Sanskrit for "joy of sound", also the title of the first of its two pieces, a concerto for guitar and chamber ensemble by Shirish Korde, an American-based composer of Indian descent. The other piece is The Birth of Naciketas - by the composer and Reid professor of music at Edinburgh University, Nigel Osborne - a guitar concertante which was inspired by the Upinashads, Hindu sacred texts.

The recording is the latest in a spate of ambitious cross-cultural projects by the 32-year-old guitarist, which have found him exploring not only Indian but jazz, Latin-American and Spanish early music genres.

Thacker, who grew up and still lives in the East Lothian village of Pencaitland, says it has taken him a while to find his own musical language. He says: "I've always had this obsession with creating something new. I've always loved going back to the absolute roots of things, the core sound, stripping back all developments and starting over again."

Thacker's classical education at Napier University (where he is now head of guitar), the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and - crucially, he says - with the Brazilian guitarist Fabio Zanon provided his essential grounding.

"The classical guitarist tends to play everything from renaissance lute music to avant-garde music from Cuba or wherever. There's no clearly defined repertoire. But I always wanted to take the improvisational brilliance of Indian music and the harmonies and spontaneity of jazz and all these different types of music from across the world and forge something new."

Listening particularly to Korde's concerto, the Indo-jazz fusion of guitarist John McLaughlin's band Shakti comes to mind, and indeed, Korde cites it as an influence on the concerto's exuberant last movement.Osborne's more meditative and richly toned sequence of movements incorporates traditional Indian thaats, or scale patterns, with its instrumental forces developing a beguiling shimmer at times, as eastern and western strings are stalked by Sandilands's delicately chiming percussion.

How does a fret-bound, classical guitarist cope with the subtle demands of eastern microtonal music? "You listen to (Indian] music for so long that it does become part of you," Thacker says, "but I've appropriated string-bending, which isn't part of classical technique, and glissando, which is a major thing in Indian music."

Thacker's other current ventures include Svara-Kanti, a pared-down offshoot of Nava Rasa but featuring the delicate Indian vocals of Japjit Kaur. A major ongoing involvement is his Camerata Ritmata collaboration with Scottish jazz musicians Paul Harrison on piano, drummer Stu Brown and the aforementioned Caribe, their repertoire ranging from Latin-American jazz to Sephardic and Middle-Eastern music, as well as exploring the 13th century sound world of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Galician-Portuguese miracle songs.

As bassist Caribe remarks during a video interview on Thacker's website: "We are not bound by the places we come from." These inspired collaborations bear this out with singular panache.

• Camerata Ritmata play Balquhidder Parish Church on 17 July as part of the Balquhidder Summer Music season, and Fringe By The Sea, North Berwick, on 11 August. Simon Thacker plays solo at Kellie Castle on 7 August, as part of Pittenweem Arts Festival (www.simonthacker.com).