Blind Spot - The Inner Vision Orchestra

This series is being presented in collaboration with St John’s Church Waterloo and Coin Street, and supported by the Arts Council. ‘Blind Spot’ will see small groups of musicians from the IVO perform regularly at venues and shine a spotlight on blind talent. We want to see more performances by talented blind musicians across the UK and around the world!

DATES & VENUES

Saturday 8th May, 7pm - ‘Popular Show Tunes’ with Kevin Satizabal, Sarah Mellor, Lioness Oyinbo (ONLINE from St John's Waterloo)

Friday 14th May, 12.30pm - ‘Spring Spirit’ with Ghow Ratnarajah, Takashi Kikuchi, Abi Baker (ONLINE from St John's Waterloo)

Friday 11th June, 12.30pm - ‘Gift of Africa’ with Victoria Oruwari, Lioness Oyinbo, Kevin Satizabal, Remi Abati (Gabriel's Wharf, South Bank Promenade)*

Saturday 26th June, 12.30pm - ‘Summer Vibes’ with Baluji Shrivastav OBE, Abi Baker, Kate Portal and Peter Bosher (Gabriel's Wharf, South Bank Promenade)*

*More details on the proposed outdoor venue for these two events to follow.

The Inner Vision Orchestra is also presenting another concert at the Waterloo Festival on Friday, 18th June at St John's Waterloo.

“A magical mixture of sounds” Sean Rafferty from BBC Radio 3 In Tune

"Inner Vision Orchestra play bloody great kick-ass music!” Charles Hazlewood

The Inner Vision Orchestra was founded in 2012 and is the world's only professional ensemble of blind musicians. Itsextensive repertoire moves between songs from Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, soulful Gospel and Blues, sublime Indian Ragas and Western Classical compositions. They celebrate the diversity of their talented members who have been brought together from around the world by Indian maestro Baluji Shrivastav OBE. Members of the orchestra burst onto the world stage at the Paralympics in 2012 and recently performed International Unlimited Commission ‘Antardrishti-Inner Vision’ to full audiences at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Norwich Arts Centre, The Royal Opera House in Mumbai and The British Council Theatre in Delhi. Members of the orchestra also give music workshops which are free to attend for all blind and partially sighted people. Driven by the intensity of an inner vision they believe in the power of music to transform lives!

MUSICIANS

Baluji Shrivastav, OBE.

Baluji is an Indian multi-instrumentalist, composer and the Musical Director of the Inner Vision Orchestra. He has released many albums of Classical Indian music and Indian world music fusion with Arc/Naxos Music, and has accompanied such major stars as Coldplay, Massive Attack, Annie Lennox and Noel Gallagher. Baluji was awarded the OBE in 2016 for services to music and as founder of Inner Vision Orchestra.

Oluremi Abati ‘Remi’

Remi plays sax, keyboards and sings. He is originally from Nigeria, studied Music Production at Haringey College, and received a Rare Rising Star Award at the House of Commons for being one of the UK’s top Black Students in 2015.

Abi Baker

Multi-talented instrumentalist Abi Baker plays piano, violin and clarinet, and completed her studies at the Royal College of Music. Abi was the recipient of the 2007 Muzio Clementi Award for her work in the area of early keyboard instruments.

Peter Bosher

Peter is a flautist, guitarist, keyboardist and musical technologist. He studied French and Philosophy at Oxford University, performing in New College Orchestra followed by Music and Sound-Recording at Surrey University.

Fereshteh Khosroujerdy

Fereshteh sings in Farsi, Dari, Turkish and English. Born on the border of Iran and Afghanistan, Fereshteh always loved to sing, but was forbidden to do so by her family. Encouraged by the Baluji Music Foundation, she is now fulfilling that dream as a key performer in the Inner Vision Orchestra. She was named one of BBC's 100 Women in 2013.

Takashi Kikuchi

Takashi began studying the viola at Tokyo University of the Arts in 1988, where he was awarded the Doctor of Musical Arts in 2003. He came to the Royal Academy of Music in 1999 for his post graduate studies and received the teaching diploma LRAM and the Lawson Award.

Thuy Mallalieu

Thuy was born in Vietnam but has spent most of his life in England. He grew up in West Sussex and now lives in London, working as an audio producer at the RNIB Talking Book Studios. He studied classical piano and sound recording at university and continues his musical pursuits as a multi-instrumentalist, playing in bands with many musical styles including pop, soul, funk and jazz.

Lioness Oyinbo

Lioness is a vocalist who won the Nigerian Entertainment Awards for Trailblazer in 2016 and who has performed with many famous names in Nigeria. She is from Norway and lives in the UK but her great love is African music and Afrobeats as her late father worked in Nigeria and she is married to a Sierra Leonian. Lioness is classically trained, performs all genres of music and can also play the ukulele and keyboards.

Victoria Oruwari

Acclaimed award-winning Soprano Victoria is a Nigerian born, London-based singer whose versatile repertoire covers art songs, operatic arias, songs from musical theatre, traditional folksongs and jazz. Victoria studied at Trinity College of Music and was a finalist in the 2018 series of BBC1 Saturday night series All Together Now.

Kate Portal

Kate plays fiddle and concertina as her main instruments, and is a vocalist with a repertoire of contemporary and traditional songs and tunes, which she performs regularly. She also tells traditional tales, drawing on up-to-date influences.

Ghow Ratnarajah

Born in Sri Lanka, Ghow is a percussionist and vocalist. He plays the South Indian Drums Miruthangam and Kanjeera and sing songs in several languages including Tamil and Hindi.

Kevin Satizabal

Kevin is an award winning composer, pianist and improviser. Kevin was born in Popayan, Colombia and began his formal music education at the Royal College of Music Junior Department at the age of 10, graduating from Birmingham Conservatoire in 2012.

Ziad Sinno

Ziad is a charismatic musician from Lebanon who came to England in 1985. He plays Oud, Arabic violin, keyboards and is also a vocalist.

More information at www.balujimusicfoundation.org . You can listen to IVO here.