Devissaro is an Australian born musician, composer and photographer. Originally trained as a classical pianist, he subsequently studied Dhrupad vocal music, as well as Hindustani bansuri and pakhawaj, under the renowned
Dagar family.
Devissaro is the founder director, composer of Asima, an eclectic boundary-breaking
young ensemble of musicians from Kerala. Asima was honoured to perform in the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall
in August 2009. Read more about Asima here
Asima, which means
'beyond boundaries' in Sanskrit, embodies its own name in spirit, soul and
music, fusing India's rhythmic and melodic systems with harmonic traditions of
western music. Devissaro, Daksha Sheth's husband, has been involved with the Daksha Sheth Dance Company since its inception. As a Visual Director, Devissaro has supervised areas such as conceptualization, stage design, costumes and lighting for the productions of the Company. As Musical Director, Devissaro has composed and performed music for most of the productions, including live stage music as well as recorded soundtracks. Landmark productions as a visual and musical director include: Yagna, Search for My Tongue, Sarpagati, Postcards from God and Bhukham.
Devissaro also works as a freelance composer writing music for dance, theatre and film. His prominent works include:
| 1988 | Devissaro and the
American Shakuhachi player Ralph Samuelson composed and performed the
music for Indonesian choreographer Sardono Kusumo in his work “Sanctum”,
commissioned for the 1988 American Dance Festival. | | 1992-93 | Visual Director and Music Director / Composer for Yagna (Daksha Sheth Dance Company)
| | 1994-95 | Devissaro was
commissioned by YUVA, the U.K. based South Asian Youth Dance Company, to
compose music for ‘Tongues Untied’.
This was subsequently recreated as 'Search for My Tongue' (Daksha Sheth
Dance Company)
| | 1997 | Visual Director
and Music Director / Composer for Sarpagati (Daksha Sheth Dance Company) | | 1998 | Created the music
for the highly successful production of Girish Karnad’s play “The Fire
and The Rain” produced by Theatre Arts of Bangalore under the direction
of Arjun Sajnani. | | 2000-01 | Visual Director
and Music Director / Composer for Bhukham (Daksha Sheth Dance Company) | | 2002-05 | Visual Director
and Music Director / Composer for Postcards from God (Daksha Sheth Dance Company) | | 2005 | Asima performed in Taiwan for the International Arts Festival
| | 2006 | Devissaro was the
Music Director for the renowned multi-lingual Indian production of
Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Nights Dream” directed by Tim Supple,
that has been described as “the most life affirming dream to be
seen in the UK since Peter Brook’s production of 1970!
This production toured in the USA, UK and Australia with 300 performances.
| | 2007 | Asima toured 7 cities in the UK through the Asian Music Circuit (AMC).
| | 2009 | Asima was honoured to perform in the BBC
Proms at Royal Albert Hall
in August 2009. | | 2010 | A 4-day collaboration with internationally acclaimed Cello player, Mathew Sharp, bansuri player, Sameer Rao (Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia's disciple), son, Tao Issaro on drums & percussion and Yakzan Pereira, to explore the possibility of a music-theatre production.
View rehearsal clips here.
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