Concert by sarod virtuoso Soumik Datta, merging the sarod with the rhythms of the natural world, headlining a festival of South Asian music.
Soumik Datta plays the Sheldonian Theatre on Friday 27 November, his 19-stringed sarod at the centre of an evening he calls Melodies in Slow Motion. It's a performance that blends music, sound design and storytelling, and it headlines a new festival of South Asian music in Oxford.
Datta is an acclaimed sarod virtuoso, an Earth Day Network Ambassador and a winner of the Aga Khan Music Award. For this show, he's pairing his instrument with the hidden rhythms of the natural world — the choir of cicadas, underground mycelial networks, and the kind of microscopic biological movements that usually go unheard. He describes the result as a cinematic, slow-motion journey, translating those tiny, natural patterns into music. It's not just a concert; the storytelling and sound design bring in themes of memory, migration and the climate crisis, so the natural world is the subject as much as the inspiration.
He won't be on his own. The sarod is joined by violin, mridangam and tabla, so while the sarod leads, there's a full ensemble behind it. The evening is presented by Music at Oxford, the city's International Concert Series, which is about to enter its 41st season. They've put this together in partnership with the Asian Arts Agency and the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, with Somerville College, University of Oxford.
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It starts at 8pm on Friday 27 November at the Sheldonian Theatre on Broad Street, and runs to around 9.20pm. Tickets are £55, £42, £30 and £18, with concessions at £27.50, £21, £15 and £9.
