‘The audience wouldn’t let us leave the stage’: the rise of the London Bollywood Orchestra
The ensemble will explore the classical roots of Indian movie soundtracks for its biggest ever show, at the Royal Festival Hall in July
Ever since the advent of Bollywood films with sound in the 1930s, music has been an integral part of the Hindi cinema experience. From soundtracking romantic escapades through sweeping strings to punctuating dramatic moments with thunderclaps of horn fanfares, Bollywood music has become as important to storylines as dialogue. Yet, few physical copies of these scores still exist. The recordings that do are often tape-worn and degraded.
“There is so much special music locked into these not-very-special recordings and they deserve to be brought to life for audiences,” composer Tim Pottier says. “That’s what the purpose of the London Bollywood Orchestra is — to give this music its rightful place, centre-stage for audiences who have grown up with it but have still never heard it live.”
Formed in 2024 by Bollywood enthusiast Vimal Anandpura and musical director Pottier, the 21-piece London Bollywood Orchestra has reinterpreted iconic film music from the likes of RD Burman and Oscar-nominee AR Rahman to sell-out audiences in Bradford, Leicester and London.
The orchestra is now preparing new material exploring the Indian classical roots of Bollywood music for its biggest show to date at London’s 2,700-capacity Royal Festival Hall on 3 July.
“Nothing like this exists in the Bollywood music world since we’re rearranging this music to bring out its beautiful intricacies,” Anandpura says. “You can see the biggest singers in the world touring with just keyboards and drums, whereas we’ve picked some of the best players from jazz and classical orchestras around the country. Audiences have been blown away by the integrity of their musicianship.”
The London Bollywood Orchestra has long been a dream of Anandpura’s but it took meeting Pottier for the project to become a reality. With a background in classical composition and conducting, Pottier was introduced to Bollywood in 2004 when he orchestrated AR Rahman’s work for a show with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
“I was immediately taken by the challenge of putting this music, which is often recorded by ear or via midi stems [computer software that replicates the sound of acoustic instrumentation], on paper and in front of an orchestra,” Pottier says.
He’s since put on concerts of playback singers Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar — vocalists who recorded the songs for Bollywood films that on-screen actors would then lipsync to — and a show of qawwali music with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.
Initially planning to create a symphony-sized orchestra, which would typically feature 70 to 100 musicians, the pair soon decided to cut down numbers to primarily feature tabla, strings and a horn section, as well as a band setup of guitar, bass and drum kit, owing to touring and rehearsal costs.
Drawing their members from London’s conservatoires and jobbing orchestras, they set to work on building a Bollywood Legends repertoire for their first concert at London’s 370-capacity Wilton’s Music Hall in October 2024. The gig was a surprise sellout and, in the years since, their audience has been steadily growing.
“No one would have thought that only 18 months after starting we’d be playing at the Royal Festival Hall,” Anandpura says.
“We have some amazing arrangers and young musicians working with us, though, and they love playing the shows, since the audiences are so enthusiastic — it’s nothing like the response you get when you play symphonic repertoire,” says Pottier. “In Bradford they wouldn’t let us leave the stage at the end of the show even though we had run out of music!”
Some of Pottier’s favourite arrangements include the reverb-laden Ghar More Pardesiya from the 2019 film Kalank, as well as RD Burnam’s Mere Naina Sawan Bhadon from the 1976 film Mehbooba, which aims to replicate ancient Indian court music, and the haunting feel of Mangeshkar’s 1965 song Gumnaam Hai Koi. For their Royal Festival Hall performance, however, the orchestra has spent the past seven months developing new material in collaboration with Indian singer Priyani Vani Panditt to highlight the foundations of Indian classical music in its pop film soundtracks.
“For the past two years I’ve been performing a new show that connects classical music with Bollywood songs to create a greater understanding of how ragas are the basis of these famous tunes,” Panditt says. “I want to bring the audiences for these two different genres together, as well as educate them on the healing and spiritual properties of ragas.
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Combining storytelling with music, the new show aims to draw the thread from the ancient melodic structures of Indian classical ragas such as Raag Darbari Kanada and Raag Pahadi to everything from the Indian national anthem to the Mangeshkar songs Phir Chhidi Raat and Ek Pyar Ka Naghma Hai.
Future plans include dates at the Alexandra Palace Theatre to celebrate the career of playback singers and sisters Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, as well as a concert of music by the father-son composing duo RD and SD Burman.
“It’s ultimately very special to let this music breathe without any visuals,” Pottier says. “On stage it’s just the orchestra and singers playing the songs of older generations’ youths, as well as the hits of younger generations’ experiences. We come together in celebration of these composers and musicians who deserve as much recognition as the films their music features in.”
London Bollywood Orchestra with Priyani Vani Panditt is performing at the Royal Festival Hall from 7.30pm on Friday 3 July.
