Sheema Mukherjee
Sheema Mukherjee absorbed North Indian classical music and the western tradition side by side, studying Indian classical music with Pandit Nikhil Banerjee and sitar with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in the USA. Brought up between Britain and India, she has a rich background to draw on in her own compositions and collaborations.
Sheema works across many styles and genres from eastern and western classical music to jazz, pop and dance music. She has collaborated with internationally renowned artists such Natacha Atlas, Transglobal Underground, Noel Gallagher, Cornershop, the Bulgarian folk singer Yanke, Simon Emmerson from Afro Celt Sound System, and saxophonist Courtney Pine. She is currently working as part of The Imagined Village project featuring Martin and Eliza Carthy, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and a host of other folk/roots luminaries.
Sheema has toured the world with a variety of ensembles. Key performances include the World Music Festival (Chicago), Montreux Jazz Festival, the Olympia-Halle (Munich), supporting Jimmy Page and Robert Plant throughout their European tour (1998) and the Olympics Arts Festival for Sydney 2000. She also makes regular appearances at WOMAD (UK) with her own ensembles.
A versatile and creative musician, Sheema works both as a composer and as a collaborator: recently she has worked with cross-genre performance collective Cascade: Beyond Eight Bars, and written for full orchestra, electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, kit drum and tablas in two new pieces of theatre (Non-contact Time and Gluey and the Lion) for the Northern Exposure Festival at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
Sheema Mukherjee absorbed North Indian classical music and the western tradition side by side, studying Indian classical music with Pandit Nikhil Banerjee and sitar with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in the USA. Brought up between Britain and India, she has a rich background to draw on in her own compositions and collaborations.
Sheema works across many styles and genres from eastern and western classical music to jazz, pop and dance music. She has collaborated with internationally renowned artists such Natacha Atlas, Transglobal Underground, Noel Gallagher, Cornershop, the Bulgarian folk singer Yanke, Simon Emmerson from Afro Celt Sound System, and saxophonist Courtney Pine. She is currently working as part of The Imagined Village project featuring Martin and Eliza Carthy, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and a host of other folk/roots luminaries.
Sheema has toured the world with a variety of ensembles. Key performances include the World Music Festival (Chicago), Montreux Jazz Festival, the Olympia-Halle (Munich), supporting Jimmy Page and Robert Plant throughout their European tour (1998) and the Olympics Arts Festival for Sydney 2000. She also makes regular appearances at WOMAD (UK) with her own ensembles.
A versatile and creative musician, Sheema works both as a composer and as a collaborator: recently she has worked with cross-genre performance collective Cascade: Beyond Eight Bars, and written for full orchestra, electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, kit drum and tablas in two new pieces of theatre (Non-contact Time and Gluey and the Lion) for the Northern Exposure Festival at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.