South African Broadcasting Corporation showed a program entitled D’Fusion on TV channel SABC 3 on April 20, 2008 featuring Rajesh Mehta music-artworks including “Songlines ‘ Jewels: Bhakti” which has been published in the newly released anthology of innovative music notation entitled “Notations 21″. The prints of this music-artwork are for sale on this website

Members of Mehta’s music-architecture project “sounding buildings” team (including vocalist and orka-m co-founder Barbara Friederichsen-Mehta, Pianist and sounding buildings artistic assistant Eunice Martins, and Cellist Rohan de Saram who was very close to Xenakis and is one of the great interpreters of Xenakis’ compositions) have been invited to the Période Musicale 2008, co-organized by the CCMIX (Centre création musicale from the late contemporary music composer Iannis Xenakis) and the Centre Culturel de Rencontre du Couvent de La Tourette (made by Architect Le Corbusier) This year’s Période Musicale will conclude with an international symposium/debate on the theme «Music – Architecture». The symposium/debate will take place between November 5 – 7, 2008 and will conclude with a musical weekend running from the evening of November 7 through the afternoon of November 9, 2008.

Rajesh Mehta’s music-artwork (Songlines’ Jewels) and his essay on Innovative Musical Notation has just been released in an Anthology of 21st Century Musical Notation entitled Notations 21 (hard cover, Mark Batty Publishers/Thames and Hudson) by Theresa Sauer and can be pre-ordered on www.amazon.com. Video loops of Mehta’s compositional work as well as the south African TV feature can be seen at a series of book release concerts from  October 4-October 18, 2008 at the Chelsea Art Museum in NYC.

For more info on his graphical work please visit:

• Notations 21 website
• Catalogue of Mehta’s Visual Work 2000-2007

(update – live concert in October cancelled!)

Berlin-based American writer Cecile Rossant has just released an exciting new novel “Tokyo Bay Traffic” on RedHen press. Mehta and Rossant were sounding boards for each other’s work during Mehta’s tenure in Berlin between 1999-2005. Cecile helped shape the concept of Mehta’s music-architecture project “sounding buildings” while Mehta critically read Tokyo Bay Traffic as it developed into a novel.

photograph by yvon baumann

Dear Friends, ORKA-M: International Institute of Innovative Music, Mumbai’s latest news:

SEE + HEAR Videos of live concerts and productions-many of which are based on the music-artwork can be seen on the “orkamvideo” channel on youtube.com.

FILM AND MEDIA ABOUT ORKA-M

• The internetTV report on ORKA-M, Mumbai and Rajesh Mehta continues to be shown via a permanent link on the German News Portal Spiegel Online.
• Dutch Filmmakers Ruben Taneja and Jan Willem Peters have just released a film of conversations with Rajesh Mehta entitled “Forces of Nature”. Watch the film here in our video section, or follow this link to watch it on their website in higher resolution.
  

CHOREOGRAPHY + GRAPHICAL MUSIC NOTATION Belgian dancer/choreographer Filip van Huffel will work virtually from London/Antwerp with Rajesh Mehta on his graphical notation framework which he will interpret choreographically. Please see blog updates on Filip’s dance company Retina Dance’s website.

An early Monsoon has arrived and the rains are a relief. Greetings from a very wet Mumbai! your ORKA-M Team, for further queries please contact orka.muse@gmail.com