The film gets underway

Folks

I owe you all a big thanks for your support, encouragement and more importantly , active participation. We have moved along the road from where we began six months ago, with a concept of doing a documentary film that tells the story of jazz in India..to beginning to edit a pilot version that will showcase the final product..

With your help ,good will, and positive energy...To sum it up, over the course of a hectic two week period we captured on High Definition Video:

- Calcutta jazz history conversations with Ajoy Ray, Ian Zacharias, Morris Menezes and others
- conversations with Anto, Carlton Kitto, Clive Hughes, Sonia Saigal in Calcutta
- a wonderful concert with the guitar of Mr. Be Bop - Carlton Kitto , his quartet, and with the vocal talents of Anjum Katyal,and Smita Mishra

- Conversations and historical material with the 96 year old former bandleader at the Taj Mahal Hotel - Mickey Correa in Bombay
- a wonderful interview with Niranjan Jhaveri and the story of how Jazz India and Jazz Yatra came about- Thank you Shail
- Bombay jazz history raconteruring with Farokh Mehta
- studio sessions and conversations with Ranjit Barot who made music for us along with bassman Karl Peters and the guitar of Sanjay Divecha (Ranjit , I dont have email id's for these great guys, so please pass this on)
- conversations with "second life " jazz fans and musiciians including Dr Farhad Kapadia and Nakul Mehta and of course India's legitimate jazz historian- Naresh Fernandes
- a fascinating conversation with "Jazzy Joe" Periera - the last of the sax men
- And most of all, the generous and gracious hospitality of the great Louiz Banks and his family who welcomed us to an evening of intimate performance featuring Louiz B, Gino (drums) , Sheldon (bass) , Adrian D'Souza (Drums) , Karl Peters, Sanjay Divecha, Joe and others - Thank you Louiz for the conversation with you and for the music. (once again, I dont have emails for all who shared the music, so please pass this on)

Thanks to Sunil Shanbag we have interview footage with jazz loving musicians who played in Bollywood including saxman Manohari Singh and drummer Leslie Godinho

Additionally , a huge thank you to all who helped and wanted to participate more actively..particularly Stanley Pinto, who we hope to return to and benefit from his perspective and musings on jazz in Bombay and a couple of whisky's perhaps ?

Also a big thanks to Ashwin Panemangalore for his incredible knowledge and willingness to track down Bollywood tracks featuring jazz musicians..And of course a great big thanks to Jehangir Dalal in Virginia whose passion for this music is unbelievable... and all those who introduced, networked, supported etc Thank you

We were blessed to have the incredible contribution a very gifted director of photography and cinematographer Avijit Mukul Kishore and soundman par excellence Suresh Rajamani.

And last , but not least Minu Tharoor, who took time off from her busy life at NYU to help us, and the Angel Oindrilla Dutt whose incredible support for this project led to a concert event that reunited Carlton Kitto with Clive Hughes and Georgie, the only remaining upright bass player in Calcutta !

I apologize if I have left anyone out, but we are just beginning and have a lot of work ahead of us. The footage is wonderful , broadcast quality , and is evocative..with people speaking from their hearts and playing the music they love.

We have a lot to do, and the next steps include - creating a six to seven minute pilot, putting together a website, and communicating what we are doing so that we can return and converse and talk about jazz with the many others we need to. We are open to any and all thoughts regarding potential sponsors who can help get this through the next stage.We need to make this happen

many thanks