Sheema Mukherjee is an internationally renowned sitar player and composer, best known for her solo work and work with Transglobal Underground and The Imagined Village (with Martin and Elisa Carthy, Chris Wood and Jackie Oates). Her 12 minute track, ‘Bending The Dark’, also the name of the last Imagined Village album, was commissioned and performed for the 2012 UK Cultural Olympiad.
Sheema Mukherjee studied North Indian classical music and the western tradition side-by-side, learning the sitar and Indian classical music under the tutelage of her uncle, the Late Pandit Nikhil Banerjee and then with the Late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Born in England with Indian parentage, she has a rich background to draw on in her own compositions and collaborations.
She has collaborated with great artist and composers e.g. Sir John Tavener. with whom she advised and was one of the soloist on his last ever written piece, Floods of Beauty, based on sanskrit scriptures and performed in 2015 at the Festival Hall.
She also worked with Martin and Eliza Carthy, Bobby McFerrin, Boris Grebenshikov, Natacha Atlas, Kula Shaker, Noel Gallagher & Cornershop, Mercan Dede, the Bulgarian Folk singer Yanka Rupkina. Another significant collaboration was with UK saxophonist Courtney Pine. Sheema has been featured on his albums Back In The Day and Devotion and was a guest artist on the ‘on track tour’ a project for the UK Commonwealth Games.
Sheema has toured the world with a variety of ensembles and key performances include The World Music Festival (Chicago), Montreux Jazz Festival and the Olympia-Halle (Munich), with Transglobal Underground supporting Jimmy Page and Robert Plant throughout their European tour (1998), the Olympics Arts Festival for Sydney 2000 and also makes regular appearances at WOMAD with her own ensembles.
More recently she has been working with various theatre groups, notably as composer for the RSC play, The Empress. Her first album was recently launched on vinyl by the LUSH record label, ECC100, with a further CD launch in the summer. Her track ‘Sikkim Girls’ inspired the creation of her own perfume sold by LUSH, and she is now also one of their team of composer-consultants, creating the LUSH Spa music and developing an Indian Themed spa. (launch TBC summer 2016).
Her ongoing projects/performances for 2016 include:
- The Story of Kali’, (the worlds angriest woman) with Emily Hennessey (website), The music was developed based on Raag theory (to colour the emotion), in keeping with the passion of the story.
- King and Corpse with Tuup (Transglobal Underground) (website: www.crickcrackclub.com)