Time On Your Hands?
Born to a young couple of doctors fond of travelling, T.L. Mazumdar was seven months old when he left Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, the place of his birth to spend the first five years of his life in North Africa.
What followed was another couple of years of travelling with his parents, most of which was spent in London, England (where he did his first formal schooling) and Europe and eventually saw the small family of three end up in Kolkata again after a brief stint in Manipal, a small town in southern India famous for it’s medical university. And Kolkata was where T.L. was to spend the next twelve years of his life.
Having being gifted with a life that had acquainted him with different worlds and cultures at a tender age, it was probably the search for an identity beyond nationality which eventually led him, amidst a life sometimes confusing for a child who coming back to a homeland that could often feel very foreign, to find an escape in the only thing he seemed not to be a disaster at. Music.
A student of an extremely patient piano-teacher called Subhas Das for all the while he lived there, it was in 1998 that his acquaintance with two gentlemen by the names of Amyt Dutta and Monojit Dutta changed the course of his life. Two of the finest and boldest musicians contemporary India has seen, Amyt Dutta (Guitarist/Composer/Producer) was to be T.L.’s first Theory/Harmony teacher and friend for life. Monojit Dutta (Latin Percussionist/Multi-Instrumentalist/Composer) went another step further and took him under his wing giving him a job as keyboard-player for his band ‘Monojit Datta And The Orient Express’--India’s first authentic Latin band. T.L.’s first real school.
A resident of Freiburg, Germany for the next few years, Kolkata was, hence, where T.L. started his career as founder-member/keyboardist and of two very important bands in Indian pop history: ‘Monojit Datta And The Orient Express’, and ‘Abhilasha’ one of the oldest and still-existing vernacular rock bands in West Bengal. While performances for MTV India, Channel-V India and prestigious venues such as Goethe Institute, Kolkata, Russian Centre of Culture (Gorky Sadan) Kolkata, American Centre for Culture (USIS) Kolkata, IIT Kharagpur etc. have been those he has had the chance to take part in, his own solo album ‘Sunday Blues’, an independent production which was never officially released, has also been featured on radio/television and received considerable local press coverage in Kolkata. Taking into consideration the fact that he was also active as a session musician live and in the studio (having worked, among others, as producer/composer for multi-national advertising firms such as ‘Clarion Bates’ and ‘Contract’), one could say that it was an active, working musician who left Kolkata again in the year 2000 to get a formal education in music at the 'International Music College, Freiburg' (Formerly the Jazz Und Rock Schule), Germany’s partner-school to the renowned ‘Berklee College of Music’ Boston.
These first years were spent in intensive hours of practice and study and workshops (attended) with musicians of international repute such as Michael Abene, Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, David Friesen, Jimmy Cobb, Ernie Watts, Eric Alexander, Phil Maturano, George Garzone, Harvie S, Mike Del Ferro, Dado Moroni, Frank Haunschild, Norbert Gottschalk , Antonio Sanchez, Lincoln Goines, Kim Plainfield, etc.
2002 saw him tour Latvia and Indonesia with ‘The Angelique Sextet’ a Freiburg-based vocal-jazz sextet (supported and co-sponsored by the Jazz Und Rock Schule, Freiburg) and play at international jazz-festivals ‘Rigas Ritmi’ and ‘Indonesia Open Jazz’ respectively. Other festivals more recent witness to T.L.'s performance include 'ZMF' International Music Festival 2006, Freiburg and the Freiburg Jazz Festival 2006. Concerts and performances with musicians the likes of Gary Barone (Frank Zappa, Buddy Rich etc.), Dieter Schroeder (Mike Keneally, Napoleon Murphy Brock), Christoph Sauer (Freundeskreis), Josef Piek (Purple Schulz), Bert Smaak (Jon lord, Acoustic Alchemy), Hiram Mutschler (Joe Pass), Markus Reuter (Pat Mastelotto) followed among others. T.L. can also be heard touring with Caifornia-based guitar-player Willie Oteri (DIW records) and British singer Charmaine Baines as part of their touring bands in Germany. His own bands, the T.L. Mazumdar Quintet and the T.L. Mazumdar Collective featuring the brilliant artists such as Massimo Buonanno (CH/USA) and Al Jawäla drum brothers Daniel Pellegrini and Markus Schumacher have also been a regular feature in the region and been met with appreciative reception.
In May 2005, T.L. Started working for the renowned independent theater-company ‘Panoptikum’ (www.theater-panoptikum.de), as live musician/co-composer/co-producer for ‘Ballgefühl’, a theater piece selected to be one of the official cultural ambassadors for the FIFA Germany 2006.
April 2008 saw the release of T.L.'s official debut album 'Four Walls (Memoirs Of A Pathetic Lover)', an album showcasing his work as singer-songwriter. The album was completely written, composed, arranged performed and produced by T.L. and features him on all instruments except Drums, played by the wonderful Swiss drummer Massimo Buonanno.
A live rendition of the album with his band [T] is one of his more recent obsessions.
T.L. is currently a student of the Pop-Akademie, Mannheim, Germany's elite unversity for Popular Music Performance and Business Management.
To Cut A Long Story Short..