Soumik Datta: 5 must watch performances

A gifted and noted sarod player, but also a composer, producer, bandleader and TV presenter to note just some of his many hats.

Datta’s breadth of arts involvement has also seen him make regular appearances at the Southbank Centre, from his first performance here as a teenager accompanying his guru, Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta, on the sarod, to his 2022 immersive concert Hope Notes in our Queen Elizabeth Hall. Most recently, in 2024, as part of our Southbank Centre Studio programme, Datta returned to present Mone Rekho, the first part of a trilogy of works addressing memory, migration and climate, in our Purcell Room.

Despite his many concerts with us, we’re aware that not everyone will have had the pleasure of having seen Datta perform. And to be frank our written descriptions can only give you so much to go on. So instead we’ve decided to introduce you to the virtuoso performer and artist through five videos of must see performances, that range from giving life to closed buildings to an unlikely stand-off with a star of Strictly…

Of course it would be remiss of us not to include a performance from our own venues in this list, so let’s get that self-indulgence out of the way first. Come with us back to 2014 and our Alchemy festival celebrating the arts and culture of South Asia. Datta on sarod and drummer Bernhard Schimpelsberger as Circle of Sound, joined Anoushka Shankar in our Queen Elizabeth Hall for a performance as mesmerising to the ears as Datta’s jacket was to the eyes.

As we’ve mentioned, musical performance isn’t the only string to Datta’s, er, sarod, he’s also the creative force behind Soumik Datta Arts which supports collaborative music, theatre, film and digital projects in order to create platforms for new emerging talent. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Soumik Datta Arts produced Silent Spaces, a series of six video performance pieces, each directed by Datta, to break the silence of the arts and cultural venues which had been forced to lock their doors. Here is the episode filmed within the Royal Albert Hall which features Datta both on the sarod and delivering spoken word.

Following on from that work created during the Covid-19 pandemic, here’s a live musical performance of ‘Wildfire’ recorded just before the world as we know it shutdown. The track is taken from Datta’s 2019 EP Jangal – Urdu for ‘jungle’, but a word that can also be translated into ‘wasteland’ – which was recorded as a protest album on the subject of climate change.

From one jungle to another, ​​and the collaborative project ‘Drunken Jungle’, which saw an unlikely pan-Asian musical convergence first brought together by choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui for the dance production Fractus V in 2015. In a unique trio Datta joins forces with Shogo Yoshii of Japan and Woojae Park of Korea to produce a unique contemporary sound with classical instruments from diverse traditions. Whilst Datta has trusty sarod in hand, Park plays the geomungo, whilst Yoshi moves between folk instruments including the taiko, shinobue and the kokyū. You can Google those in your own time whilst enjoying this, the project’s title track.

And last, but certainly not least, something decidedly different. Bill Bailey’s 2008 Tinselworm tour was the musical-leaning stand-up comedian’s biggest tour to date, culminating with a gig at Wembley Arena. A big room that demands a big finale, and so Bailey called on the services of Datta for a memorable duet in which the pair traded solos in a unique and memorable performance dubbed ‘duelling sitars’. OK, yes, Bailey is on guitar and Datta on sarod, but we’ll let that slide as it’s just so damn mesmerising.