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Vivek Venugopal is an autodidact Composer, Guitarist & Producer currently based in Hyderabad, India and he started his music project Visita in 2014. His compositions feature sophisticated harmonies and unconventional rhythms and he is influenced by a melange of genres and traditions of music including Western Classical, Jazz, and the Ethnic Music Traditions of India, Brazil/Latin America, Andalusia, Mali, Armenia & Persia, and Celtic Music. He unites all these diverse influences in an idiosyncratic fashion, in his compositions, but he primarily identifies with contemporary classical music.

He has also worked on several commissioned works, including a String Quartet, Wind Quintet, a set of pieces for Piano Trio, a set of wordless choral pieces for SATB choir, and another piece for Soprano, Alto, Piano, Guitar & Cello (all these works are unreleased and will be premiered and released in the second half of 2020 and in 2021). Apart from being a composer, he has a unique approach to the steel string Acoustic Guitar and has performed across India. He is also the co-inventor of a new instrument called the ‘Visitar’, which is a steel string guitar with 8 strings, tuned to A1 D2 A2 D3 G3 A3 D4 G4. The instrument features several innovations, and Vivek is currently working on some new pieces for this unique instrument.

While he is primarily an autodidact, he has also studied under the likes of French-Algerian Guitar virtuoso Pierre Bensusan; Latin Grammy winning Brazilian pianist Marcos Nimrichter; and Indian Percussion & Konnakol maestro Ghatam Karthick. He has worked with several accomplished musicians from across the world, including Magdalena Sas (Cello, Poland/USA); Tatiana Kritskaya (Cello, Moldova); Tomasz Pajak (Violin, Poland); Salome Rebello (Choral Conductor, Israel/India); Zdenek Kansky (Contrabass, USA); Johnny Woodham (Trumpet, UK); Arsen Petrosyan (Duduk, Armenia); Jay Parte, Shantanu Patel, Mitali Saraf (Piano, India). To date, he has released five albums through his music project Visita, with five more to be released this year and in 2021. He is being hailed by musicians and critics as a composer with a unique perspective and style. His music project, Visita, is in essence a contemporary music project, which explores various forms/traditions/genres of music, but it dares to be beyond the music. Visita is also about the harmonization and interaction of ideas, poetry, philosophy, art, and life, with music. Visita, is the Sanskrit word for ‘light before dusk’, and is derived from the word ‘Viy-shee-ta’. The colours of dusk, as seen on the horizon, are an intricate mélange of the essential duality of night and day. One may be lost in these dazzling colours, and one may never formally define the gradient of this transition: there are endless possibilities in the harmonization of a duality. While music will always remain quintessential to Visita, it is the other formal element which will colour it in a way which transcends the music.

Hyderabad, India

http://www.visitamusic.com

vivek@visitamusic.com