HARPREET BANSAL EXPLORES THE MUSICAL MIND IN NEW ALBUM "STATES OF MIND"

Violinist Harpreet Bansal presents her new album ‘States of Mind’

together with the adventurous Cikada String Quartet and the Harpreet Bansal Trio 

The foundation of Harpreet’s compositions is decades of schooling and training within the Indian raga tradition, with its scales and frameworks, from which she ventures in various directions. The music is North Indian Classical but draws on various folk music styles, contemporary classical music, Bollywood and much else besides and between. The result is an album characterised by its mix of sounds, unpredictable structures and seamless transitions within and between each track. Together, these three songs provide a very special soundscape where some listeners will experience the discovery of new territory, while others will feel something close to a homecoming. 

With this album Harpreet Bansal is once again crossing musical and geographic boundaries and, in her characteristic way, breaking the rules and confinements of our world. It is a way of affirming the roots we have, but at the same time expanding the idea of who we are. The plurality in the title, States of Mind, is a reminder telling us that the disordered inner lives we sometimes have, also can be understood as the mirror image of the diverse realities in which we live, with all its haphazardness and harmony, turbulence as well as tranquillity - just like Harpreet Bansal's music. 

“Otherwise”, which Harpreet describes as “a journey from clarity to uncertainty and chaos”, starts out cautiously, in a settled state of mind, spending the first half of its more than twenty minutes building up to something, with strings and tabla, but without revealing to the listener which way the song is heading. The earlier parts carry elements that might promise a hopeful trajectory, but then an eeriness creeps in and bends the arc towards a darker place. When the tabla intervenes one last time, each touch feels like a drop of rain – light and sporadic to begin with, then turning into a small monsoon– before “Otherwise” retreats and leaves us unresolved.

“Light” brings, as the name suggests, a different atmosphere. The song is gentle but brighter, at times a playful dance where the violin, piano and tabla are seeking and approaching each other. Gradually they initiate a percussive escalation, with the tabla and piano soon chasing the other, as if they are butterflies charging up a hill together. “Light” culminates as the violin re-enters and takes the song to its blissful closure.

The third and final track, “Lotus”, is a delicate and condensed composition. The melody carrying the song, working its way from the very beginning to the end, resembles an uninterrupted monologue – a story told through the vibrations of the violin strings, maybe about some of the things that the lotus flower symbolises; pureness, growth, enlightenment and overcoming the obstacles of life through resilience.

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