Jules
Born in 1972, Jules grew up in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Starting to learn the guitar at the age of 12, he concentrated on the electric blues guitar in his teenage years and went on to take an interest in a wider range of styles during his degree at York University.
Based in London since 1995, he’s performed and recorded in styles as diverse as jazz, Cuban, flamenco, Zimbabwean and Indian music. He has performed at major London venues such as Ronnie Scott´s, the Jazz Café, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hammersmith Apollo.
In 2006 he was musical director of a live BBC radio broadcast (Ras Kwame, 1XTRA), and has also recorded for programmes on BBC Radios 1, 3 and 4.
Equally proficient on guitar and bass guitar, in Nirakar´s repertoire he mainly plays the Spanish classical guitar.
Sulekh
Sulekh Ruparell is a trained classical singer, harmonium and tabla accompanist and artist of 10 years performance experience who exploits the diverse and dynamic nature of Indian Classical Music.
Most recently he gave vocal recitals, tabla solos and interactive workshop demonstrations to audiences in France, Germany, Spain and Austria. As well as teaching privately and at mainstream schools, Sulekh is the Director of Eastern Music Company, a commercial company dedicated entirely to the music of the sub-continent and which is published on the website www.tabla.co.uk.
A versatile and diverse vocalist, Sulekh has taught and performed several genres of semi-classical Indian music including ghazal, bhajan, folk and Bollywood film song. As well as having this extensive vocal repertoire, he has educated and trained several Tabla students who are rapidly becoming accompanists in their own right. His knowledge and understanding of the rhythmic complexity of Tabla has not only been confined to Indian Music but has also been utilised in many other fields outside that sphere. In the last few years, he has created rhythms for Nomadica, an established 6 piece Klezmer band as well as Elaire, a modern 9 piece Flamenco band.
In this latest project with Nirakar, Sulekh has used his imagination to adapt the repertoire of tabla to melodies influenced by Jazz, Latin and Indian Classical Ragas.