MUMBAI: If you are still hungover from all the December festivals, here is another one that is sure to get you high on music. Storm Festival recently announced their initial line-up of their upcoming 2014 edition on their Twitter handle and Face Book page, with festival ambassador Shankar Mahadevan, UK based house and trance DJ Eddie Halliwell, Nikhil Chinapa and Raghu Dixit, appeasing everyone’s music taste buds with the promised five stages and over 45 artistes.
The festival will include a whirlwind blend of artistes from a wide variety of genres. Audiences will be treated to the sounds on five stages; Camp Jam stage, Dance Music stage and World Music from the first edition, the Singer-Songwriter stage (introduced in 2013) and this year’s novelty, Plug n’ Play stage. The Plug n’ Play stage is to give fresh talent a chance to perform. Festival Director Sachin Bopanna said, “We try to bring in newer element every year, and we have kept up the tradition of adding another stage this year too- the Plug n Play stage- it’s called the Namma Bengaluru stage which will be featuring from Bangalore city.”
As of now, mega collaborations to watch out for in this edition are Indian composer- playback singer Shankar Mahadevan and American clarinetist Shankar Tucker, composer-singer Lesle Lewis and the GenX, Bangalore-Rock band Thermal and a Quarter featuring Ravi Kullor, and Raghu Dixit featuring a surprise folk collaboration. GenX, in case you are wondering, is the aggregate of all the accomplished musicians and composers; Hariharan’s sons Akshay and Karan, Shankar Mahadevan’s sons Shiddharth and Shivam, L. Subramanium’s daughter Bindu and and son Ambi, Lesle Lewis’s daughter- Divya and Loy Mendonsa’s daughter- Alyssa and son, Shane. This will be their first public performance.
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The World Music stage will host Papon & The East India Co., Susheela Raman, Mynta, Avial, Swarathma, Aurko, Indiva, Anthony Dassan Yen Party, Sparsh and Rock Veda. Dropping some beats on the EDM stage will be Eddie Halliwell, Nikhil Chinnapa & Rohit Barker (Dance Repuplic), Sanjay Dutta, Shekhar, Pearl, Ash Roy, DJ Nash, Nawed Khan, Tuhin Mehta, Vishnu, Adit Achaiah, Sam Abraham and the official Storm DJ, Swing. The real treat will be the singer-songwriter stage that will feature upcoming and distinctive outliners of non-mainstream music, meaning it is sure to have Raman Mahadevan showcasing his new album ‘Raagalicious’, Tetseo Sisters, Abha Hanjur (Sufistication), Ankur Tewari, Vasudha Sharma, Nischay Parekh, Pragnya Wakhlu, Solder and of course, winners of the Voice of Storm.
Bopanna also spoke to radioandmusic.com on how they picked their performers, “A sense of good music and musicianship are driving factors towards the selection of artistes at Storm. The 2nd edition of Storm festival witnessed two powerhouses of the Indian music industry performing together for the first time- Bollywood musical stalwart Shankar Mahadevan collaborated with the revered, biggest Indian band- Indian Ocean to mark the grand finale of Storm Festival 2013.The festival has a varied selection of music across genres to appeal across a large spectrum. The aim is to being in the best in both International music as well as national artists to perform at the venue.”
The camp-out festival will also have pre-storm gigs titled ‘Chasing Storm’, which will kick off at Bangalore with Vachan Chinnappa on 12January, at Love Shack and on 18 January at Turquoise Cottage in Delhi. There will be a total of 15 pre-gigs across multiple cities.
The festival will take place just outside of Bangalore on January 31st, February 1st and 2nd, 2014 at Stormfields, Gonighattapura village, Sarjapura Hobli, Karnataka. The festival saw over 5000 Stormers over two days in 2013. Tickets for the festival are available on Bookmyshow.com and are nominally priced at Rs. 4000 which includes the stay as well.
