Durban - CANADIAN award-winning vocalist and saxophonist Dr Sundar Viswanathan and his ensemble, Avataar, visit Durban next week as part of their seven-date concert tour of the country.
“It’s a combination of all the different talents of musicians in the band and all the sounds that come from similar backgrounds in jazz. It’s music that represents Canadian culture,” said Viswanathan.
The Toronto-based group’s debut album, Petal, is a perfect representation of Viswanathan’s ideals. He said the band had also been a means through which he could express spirituality through art: “This record came out of my spirituality. The album Petal is related to a flower petal. I guess one day I was writing music and I was looking at my young kids, and their fragility struck me and I came face-to-face with my own mortality in a way.
“The flower metaphor was a common thing, Buddhists talk about human beings as a flower that expresses their beauty and it moves onward.
“That was a big part of this album and project, the spirituality and the idea of universal consciousness and one consciousness that ties everyone together.
“I’ve played in South Africa before with Darius Brubeck, Mageshen Naidoo, Nduduzo Makhathini, and I’m just compelled by the energy and the optimism of the people. So we needed to come back.”
Avataar’s concert tour takes place at UKZN on Wednesday and at The Chairman on Thursday. Visit sundarmusic.com