Penny For Your Love - A Spoken Word and Jazz Show

Nupur Saraswat and Reya's Ensemble come together to create an evening of spoken word, jazz, lyrical ballads, and theatrical poetry that will call upon you to express your presence however you see fit – laugh, cry, dance, and sing along.

This four-piece, avant-garde collaboration invites you to give your weekend a little penny-flipping, bluesy spin.

Expect some familiar, nostalgic sounds from the likes of Nina Simone; maybe you'll hear Ella Fitzgerald, along with an anti-poetic journey through some unfamiliar territories. The experience will take the audience through theme of love, longing, freedom, and death – and for a moment we won't be so alone together. 

About Nupur Saraswat is a creator, stage artist, and activist. In 2017, she created a new art form for herself called Theatrical Poetry that brought together spoken word, theatre, music, and movement. She has since shared the stage with Javed Akhtar, Rahul Bose, Barkha Dutt, and more. She has performed her shows in cities like Berlin, Paris, Colombo, Mumbai, Bangalore, etc. and continue to create experiences that invite, invigorate, and leave you wanting a little more each time.

About Reya's Ensemble collaborates with some fine musicians all over the country and has been creating some amazing experimental music over the last 6 years in the field of Jazz, Funk, Lyrical ballads & Ghazals.

About Reya (Vocalist)

Music has been the ultimate form of expression for Reya since childhood and thus considers herself to be an artist who emote through music. 

She has been training in Hindustani Classical music for the last 15 years under the guidance of her guru, Acharya Jayanta Bose. She has a deep inclination towards western music mainly in Jazz, Funk, R&B, Soul and Operatic and effortlessly blends into all the genres and disciplines. She has performed in a lot of noted experimental concerts such as Vocal Symphony, Bengali Qawali, Music-o-Mime, Bengali Operatic and East- West. She has also performed at The Jazz Bar, Edinburgh and The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2017.

About Varsha (Pianist)

A Bangalore based pianist. She has a Licentiate Diploma in Western Classical Piano Performance. She studied for several years under renowned concert pianist Neecia Majolly. She has performed at the Young Performers Concert series in 2012 and was a semi-finalist at the National level Piano competition Con Brio 2016.

She also performed from time to time with various bands at different venues including The Hard Rock Cafe and as a lounge pianist at The Sheraton. 

In the last few years, she has been exploring Jazz and Contemporary styles of composition and improvisation under the tutelage of pianist/composer Aman Mahajan. 

She also loves teaching the piano and has been doing so for 10 years now.

About Abhay (Carnatic Guitar)

Born in Kerala, South India and brought up in Mumbai, Abhay has grown up with music in his family and his blood. He took a fancy to the Guitar around his early teens and has never looked back since. 

Starting with Western genres such as Jazz and Blues and being influenced by artists like John McLaughlin, Django Reinhardt, Joe Pass and B.B.King he developed a keen sense of hearing and playing moulding his own unique expression and texture on the guitar and quickly building a reputation for himself within the music circles in Mumbai and around. A couple of years after exploring the guitar through jazz and blues, Abhay felt the need to explore an as yet rarely visited genre on the guitar, South Indian Classical music (also known as Carnatic Classical). Being an extremely difficult art form to explore on a predominantly Western instrument not designed for the rigours of Indian Classical, Abhay took it upon himself to challenge established norms and develop a new, unique and extremely expressive and vigorous style of Carnatic Music on the guitar. 

It was around this time that Abhay met his Guru and Mentor, the legendary Mandolin Maestro Vidwan U Srinivas under whose guidance Abhay cemented his new style of playing and developed it into a polished and fine art form unique to the electric guitar. He is now currently the only Carnatic Guitar Artiste in the world performing and teaching the U Srinivas Bani (style) of playing on the electric guitar.