The project
The Kashmiri santoor speaks with gentleness and power, in universal melodies scented with the East.
Jean-Marc Zelwer built Try Paradise around compositions written for this crystalline instrument, a hammered zither of some hundred strings that came from Persia and became a solo voice in Indian classical music. He brought together sounds that had never met before: the deep warmth of the fretless bass, Turkish and Indian percussion, and the unexpected steelpan of Trinidad.
It all began with an encounter in 2019, at the Terre de Mixes festival in Limours, when Jean-Marc Zelwer and Patrick Chartol met Umadevi Nageswara Rao, a singer from Tamil Nadu. Her sumptuous voice, steeped in devotional and Carnatic song, became the heart of the band. The result is music that is carefully written yet open to improvisation, refined, delicate and warm.
Around this core, Try Paradise likes to invite a soloist, each bringing a new colour: erhu master Gan Guo, a sitar, a bansuri flute… For its first quintet performance, in 2021, the band also shared the stage with kathak dancer Isabelle Anna.
“From Kashmir to Trinidad, by way of South India and the Bosphorus, Try Paradise’s artistic project is a poetic icebreaker.”
