RAFIQ BHATIA OF SON LUX TO PERFORM AT SUNDAY NIGHT’S OSCARS® WITH DAVID BYRNE AND STEPHANIE HSU
Photo Credit: John Klukas
PERFORMING SOLO AT BIG EARS FESTIVAL ON APRIL 1
Innovative and avant-garde New York City guitarist Rafiq Bhatia will be performing at the 95th Oscars this Sunday night with his band Son Lux. Comprised of Bhatia, Ian Chang and founder and front man Ryan Lott, the band is nominated for Original Score for the film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and will be performing the song “This Is A Life”.
These are Son Lux’s first Academy Award nominations, and represent some other noteworthy accomplishments: Bhatia is the first American-born composer of South Asian ancestry to be nominated for original score, Ian Chang is the first person from Hong Kong nominated in the category, and Son Lux is the first artist credited as a band to receive a scoring nomination since The Beatles for ‘Let It Be (1971)’.
Bhatia is the first-generation American son of Muslim immigrant parents who trace their ancestry to India by way of East Africa. Early influences such as Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, and Madlib—as well as mentors and collaborators including Vijay Iyer and Billy Hart—prompted him to see music as a way to actively shape and represent his own identity, not limited by anyone else’s prescribed perspective.
Bhatia released the solo album ‘Breaking English’ in the spring of 2018. Throughout the record, Bhatia’s guitar is just one part of a teeming, much bigger picture. Tense violin, exhaled gospel vocals, ricocheting drums and foreboding bass also populate the record, all characters in an enveloping piece of musical cinema.
Bhatia followed the album with the January 2020 release of ‘Standards Vol. 1,’ a four song EP that transforms canonical jazz works into otherworldly sounds that are uniquely his own. Watch his rendition of Duke Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood”, a vividly throbbing clip, HERE.
Bhatia is also fresh off the heels of a sold-out Carnegie Hall show with Samora Pinderhughes and a duo concert at the San Jose Jazz Festival with Ambrose Akinmusire; on April 1 he’ll also be performing a new solo set at Knoxville’s Big Ears Music Festival.
“It’s not enough to call Bhatia a guitarist and leave it at that, just like it’s insufficient to simply refer to his new EP, “Standards Vol. 1,” by its name,” The New York Times said at the time. “He treats his guitar, synthesizers, drum machines and electronic effects as architectural elements — sound becomes contour; music becomes something to step into rather than merely follow.”