Minimal Music Festival Sarathy Korwar at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Amsterdam

There is no shortcut to a transcendent experience. Drummer, composer and producer Sarathy Korwar - a fixture in the British jazz scene and also known for his work with Shabaka Hutchings and Anoushka Shankara - lives by this principle. His latest album There is Beauty, There Already, which dropped in November, is a testament to this: a forty-minute, hypnotic percussion suite performed without pauses. With one track organically flowing into the next, the journey offers a reward of pure catharsis at the end. Korwar shares the stage with three other percussionists in this fascinating trip of colours, layered rhythms, beats and drones. For Sarathy Korwar, genres are clearly irrelevant. You could say he’s been shaped in equal measure by jazz, Indian folk, electronica, and the minimalism of composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Korwar’s previous album KALAK topped many ‘best of the year’ lists, and he has once again set the bar high with There is Beauty, There Already. Korwar’s vibrant, ringing plea for the melodic and emotional power of percussion is simply irresistible.