20/07/2008 Mike Butler, Metro

A listen to Northern Namaste, the debut album from Arun Ghosh, prompts the question: what is this fiery music and where does it come from? The idiom is Indo-jazz, the meeting point of Indian classical music and modal jazz. The pioneers were Joe Harriott, a West Indian saxophonist, and John Mayer, a Calcutta-born violinist/composer, establishing its multicutural credentials from the first.

Ghosh, in his own words, was 'concieved in Calcutta, bred in Bolton, matured in Manchester and currently lives in London'. The music, variously delicate and rousing, reflects the profusion, the contradiction and the exhilaration of multicultural urbanity. His clarinet positively entrances with the bright, clear tone and graceful melody. The same serene agility is evident in his onstage gyrations. If the album can't convey the full physical presence of Ghosh in person, it's as close as the medium permits.

Rhythm is the thing with his Indo-Jazz Sextet, as Nilesh Gulhane's tabla patterns are subsumed by the street grooves of the mighty Myke Wilson. With a claim to being the funkiest drummer in Manchester, Wilson here supplements a steady beat with a continuous roll of accents and multiple rhythms. It would be unbelievably funky if it wasn't so exotic. Idris Rahman on tenor saxophone plays in unison with Arun. What harmony there is is provided by Kishon Khan on piano and, unusually, Sylvan Richardson on six-string bass.

14/06/2008 Ken Hunt (Jazzwise)

Like Northern Namaste (Camoci Records CAMOC1001, 2008), Ghosh’s debut album, the Arun Ghosh Sextet opened with Aurora. Unlike the recording, the piece did not fade out. Over the course of this wondrous calling card, Aurora included clarinet solos and melodic consolidations from Ghosh himself, a tenor sax break from Idris Rahman (no slipping from soprano to tenor for him) and a piano solo from Kishon Khan. The second piece, Longsight Lagoon - Longsight being a district in Manchester - came across as a fun piece to play, replete with possibilities. On it, in modal terms and inflections Khan’s piano was definitely more Aziza Mustafa Zadeh than V. Balsara or Jnan Prakash Ghosh. To translate more Azerbaijani modal than Indian. Deshkar (’helpfully’ illuminated by Ghosh’s “an Indian scale from India”) and Bondhu (derived from Bengali boatmen’s folksong) preceded the blast-away Uterine - another birth reference - one of the top-notch compositions in his portfolio. The Sextet’s other musicians were Liran Donin on double-bass, the standing Nilesh Gulhane on tabla and fellow Mancunian Dave Walsh on kit drums and percussion, especially on Deshkar (Love In The Morning). Over 45 minutes or whatever it was, Ghosh displayed extraordinary charisma and musicianship and a consistently riveting compositional skill, born out of composing for theatre. The sextet proved its worth over and over again. When there was a sound glitch with Donin’s amp at the beginning of Uterine (one to hear before you die), piano, tenor and drums covered in such a way that if you had had your eyes closed it would have sounded as if was just Indo-jazz vamping into an introduction.

http://en.world.freemusic.cz/index.php/indo-jazzwise-pizza-express-jazz-club-soho-london/

04/06/2008 John Fordham, The Guardian

Young Manchester-raised clarinetist Arun Ghosh's group played a much more upfront mix of south Asian melodies and western street-grooves, driven by a powerful Indo-western rhythm section including drummer Dave Walsh and freewheeling Led Bib bassist Liran Donin. The horns stayed close to the themes, so the improv flexibility was mainly in the pulse (though pianist Kishon Khan often pulled the jubilantly whooping tunes toward jazzier ambiguities) which gave this engaging band both a melodic accessibility and an edge. Ghosh, rocking on his feet, looked like a charismatic figure with a future.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jun/04/1

22/05/2008 Chris Parker, The Vortex

'Original music of South Asian origin with a contemporary jazz attitude' was promised and delivered by Mancunian Arun Ghosh's sextet, spearheaded by his powerful clarinet and Idris Rahman's pleasantly breathy tenor, decorated by Kishon Khan's delicate but robust piano, and driven by bassist Liran Donin, tabla player Aref Durvesh and drummer Pat Illingworth.

Playing material from Ghosh's debut Camoci album, Northern Namaste, the band, typically, would state a rolling, lively theme over a repeated bass figure, then explore it via the solo round in the conventional jazz manner, but their overall sound was anything but conventional, consisting of a vibrant mix of alternately snaking and piercing clarinet, chiming and rippling piano, understated but none the less effective tenor, hypnotically booming bass and rattling, chattering percussion.

Ghosh himself is the perfect front man, forthright and funny in his stage announcements but patently serious about his exhilarating, multi-textured, rousing music, which Ð like much contemporary jazz uncontrivedly mixes music from a specific and readily identifiable tradition with improvisation to produce something fiercely original yet wholly accessible.

http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk/gig-reviews/2008/May/arun-ghosh.html