Atlantis Trio
Tsuen Wan Town Hall
MutaMenti HK
Hong Kong
September 27, 2023

A lot of flak is (fairly) laid on the often clumsy, jarring aesthetics of "global-beat," "world fusion," or whatever you want to call it (terms I use sparingly and with reservation). But the truth is however earnest the expectation, however tasteful the application, melding musical traditions isn't always as seamlessly intuitive as the true masters make it appear. Music might be a universal language, but heavy accents and differing dialects mean not everyone is always understood.

This much was made clear by the well-meant but ultimately stunted Atlantis Trio—which piqued my interest with a line-up promising sitar and tabla paired with jazz piano. The two camps appeared symbolically at opposing ends of the stage—the music they made an earnest attempt to bridge the gap. But defined by its open tuning and immutable sympathetic strings, the sitar is necessarily restricted to a single chord. On both pianist's