Singer Kshitij Tarey who is known for creating a mark with films like Dev D, Anwar and Murder 2 among others takes a deep plunge into the independent music scene by dropping his album Classic Crossover. And with this three-track album, which explores multiple genres, the 38-year-old collaborates with international artistes including Grammy Award-winning musicians like Ruslan Sirota and Pt Vidhwa Mohan Bhatt, which he calls his ‘dream project’. A tete-a-tete with Tarey.
Classic Crossover must have been special to you given it has two Grammy winners and another talented international musician.
This has been my dream project. I was planning to do this for a long time but could not do it due to other commitments. During the Covid period, since nothing much was happening, I decided to start working on it. Classical Crossover is a fusion album and the idea was to use two different genres and fuse them into one song and produce it in such a way that even a layman can enjoy it without getting into the technical details. The beauty of Classical Crossover is that even if you don’t understand Indian Classical music or jazz, funk or any kind of music, you can still groove to the songs from the album. I have been lucky to have international artists, Grammy Award winners, as well as extraordinarily talented Indian artists collaborating with me for multiple tracks in this album.
Since you are into playback singing, what is it that led to the collaboration and ultimately the album?
I am not new to the independent scene but because I have commitments in films, I get less time to create something for myself. So, the idea of an album was there on my mind for a long time.
Let’s talk about the tracks. For the first track More ghar aye you have collaborated with international artist Camille Frellix. How was the experience?
It’s a classical funk track and working with Camille Frillex has been outstanding. I contacted her on Instagram and sent the track. She was very supportive and very upbeat about doing this track. We had a lot of chats about the approach and it was just amazing to work with such a wonderful artiste. As informed by her, the track has been getting amazing responses in Paris, France.
Tell us about the tracks for which you got the Grammy winners on board.
The next track would be a fusion between thumri and jazz and it features Grammy award-winning jazz pianist Ruslan Sirota from Los Angeles. It’s the famous thumri Ka karu sajni, releasing in the second half of April and the solo piano by Sirota is worth listening to.
The next track after that is Lullaby ft. Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt that would be releasing after that. I created it for my twin sons and it is a very soothing track and very close to my heart as I used to read stories to them while sleeping.
Both Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhattji and Ruslan Sirota are legends in the music industry. I am a big fan of theirs. I have been listening to Panditji since childhood and was following Ruslan for a long time on social media. Whenever I create any track I have an idea of what instruments and which singers would sound great with the songs. When I created Jazz-Thumri and Lullaby, I instantly knew that I would like to have these two artists collaborate. So I approached Panditji through a common friend and connected with Ruslan Sir on Instagram. I sent them the rough tracks and thankfully they liked them and agreed to come on board. The recordings were all done online and they were very encouraging towards me and I am honoured to have worked with them.
Tell us about your upcoming projects.
My next Bollywood movie is Mrs. Undercover which features Radhika Apte and Sumeet Vyas and is directed by Anushree Mehta. I have done the background score for it. Apart from that two more Bollywood projects are in the pipeline and one more international project. I am also working on a beautiful ghazal.