ORKA-M introduces its near-future plans to enter the animation film production sector with a short experimental animation film entitled “Galactic Dance (2008)” based on the graphical elements from Mehta’s music-artwork “imap 2 (2002)”. ORKA-M animation films have the unique attribute that music is the innovative engine powering the films and even the animation graphics are derived from music.  This particular film was created with the animator/artist Louise Egan in Cork, Ireland in 2005 during Mehta’s Irish Arts Council artist-in-residency. The music is eerily prophetic of the Asian tsunami as it is the recorded material from an improvisation entitled “the four elements” live in concert on Dec. 22, 2004 at the seaside Galle Face hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka, four days before the devastating Tsunami hit and during which Mehta was still in the vicinity.

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The concert was initiated by Mehta in honor of Cellist Rohan de Saram’s receiving an honorary doctorate in his country and included De Saram on cello, Mehta on Hybrid trumpets, and Sri Lankan percussion maestro Piyasara Shilpadhipathi.

New paintings by Rajesh Mehta are currently being exhibited at our Juhu, Mumbai Gallery:

Prints of songlines ‘ jewels: bardo and nagaraja will be available soon through our online shop!

Prints for Purchase

The highest quality prints of Mehta’s music-artwork based on his graphical music notation framework and his narrative paintings continue to be sold in our online shop with new additions underway! Please see the shop on this site for details. Personal appointments to visit our Juhu, Mumbai Gallery where the entire collection of original works as well as the prints are currently being exhibited can be made by contacting ORKA-M’S co-founder Barbara Friederichsen-Mehta, orka.muse@gmail.com

Rajesh Mehta has just been invited to contribute to Findings on elasticity – a book that will made by the Pars Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. A brief description by Pars below:

“Pars is an experimental and independent initiative that views the arts and sciences as essentially creative processes borne out of sheer curiosity. We collect the thought notations of those artists and scientists who shape the way we perceive the world. These are bound in an annual publication, which has a different theme each year and is published by Lars Mueller Publishers. Our aim is to create an atlas of creative thinking at the beginning of the 21st century.
The first book was Findings on ice. Contributors included among others, Richard Fortey (palaeontologist), Olafur Eliasson (artist), Iman Mersal (poet), R&Sie(n) architects, Richard Foreman (theatre director) Ferran Adrià (master chef) and Siobhan Davies (choreographer). A full list of all those involved can be found on our website www.parsfoundation.com and a sample of the publication can be found on
http://www.parsfoundation.org/download/findings_on_ice.pdf.

The theme for our next publication is elasticity, in the broadest sense of the word.”

South African Broadcasting Corporation showed a program entitled D’Fusion on TV channel SABC 3 on April 20, 2008 featuring innovative trumpeter, composer, engineer Rajesh Mehta and his music-artwork.

Mehta has been invited to teach for October 14-24, 2008 by Architect/ Stage Designer Serge von Arx (who has been working regularly with Theatre-Director Robert Wilson) and who heads the Scenography department at the Norwegian Theatre Academy in Fredrikstad.

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 will now be released late August 2008 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. Trio ORKA-M featuring Cellist Rohan de Saram, South indian percussionist Jayachandra Rao and Mehta on Hybrid and Slide Trumpets will play in a book release concert series on Oct. 4, 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 - concert date moved to Oct. 4)

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