By Peter Legget, Walker West Music Academy

This October, Walker West Music Academy welcomed emerging improvisor Aakash Mittal and his quartet. The group performed music from Aakash’s latest release entitled Videsh in addition to performing compositions from a forthcoming record. Aakash and his quartet are among a new generation of young musicians incorporating an array of musical and cultural influences that when combined form a distinctive contemporary style. In the group you are as likely to hear echoes of hip hop drummer Chris “Daddy” Dave as your are of Paul Chambers; as likely to hear hints of Ravi Shankar as much as the influence of John Abercrombie.

Aakash for one, experienced the influence of both East Indian and American cultures growing up and has visited his father’s hometown of New Delhi on an annual basis over the past several years in part to study with East Indian classical musicians. During the group’s performance, he shared how this experience continues to have a tremendous impact on how he approaches improvising and composing and that through the lens of this influence, he views jazz in its contemporary form not as a static idiom in which players must necessarily play in the style of the great predecessors but rather as an evolving amalgamation of personal influences. This he posits, is precisely the perspective that those considered jazz legends by today’s standards took in their own time.

Similar sentiments were evident throughout the group. Josh Moore, the group’s reactive and driving percussionist for instance, who is originally from Austin, Texas shared that his early high school experiences as a musician included playing a weekly gig in a blues band in which he played into the early hours of the morning. This clearly informs the player he is today, not from a stylistic perspective but in the sense that as a improvisor, he has a deep and developed relationship with his instrument that is apparent instantly upon experiencing a performance. He creates soundscapes not within the bounds of a jazz drummer but rather as a contemporary improvising percussionist. His sonic capacity, nuance and flexibility enhance the music immensely, literally making moments of the music jump to life and show how his long time association with the drums and the hours invested in those late night high school gigs provides the foundation from which he performs today.

Diverse influences could also be heard through bassist Jean-Luc Davis and guitarist Matt Fuller whose contributions to the collective provide subtle and conscientious support, which at times seemed a dizzying task given the complexity of many of the compositions, particularly those influenced by East Indian rhythms and harmonic theory. When listening to the group, one has the sense that as the collective continues to develop as a unit, so too will the vocabulary, flow and compositional ideas. This will be quite impressive given that the group already navigates these areas with ease.

As Walker West Music Academy continues to broaden the scope of its community music education, the opportunity to host this group of young improvisors provided a glimpse into the diverse influences of this generation’s young musicians and the many emerging streams of contemporary music that will one day be a part of their legacy.