Work
An Irish Raga
solo guitar improvisation
About
An Irish Raga is dedicated to Ravi Shankar, the late master Indian sitarist. I created this piece to coincide with my performances at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Shankar was performing at the main festival at the same time. I was privileged to witness him performing there. He was in his 90’s yet still performed with great dexterity and musicianship.
An Irish Raga is not notated, it’s a piece that’s in my head and it is mainly improvised around some melodic figures in Irish and Indian modal scales. Therefore every performance of the piece is quite different.
The version presented here was created in 2020 during the Covid Pandemic lockdown. It also came a year after I had visited India for the first time, where I learnt a lot more about Carnatic music, specifically South Indian traditions.