Encased in the majestic Umaid Palace, the Trophy Bar offers a visually immersive cultural experience that serves as a comfy reading salon during the daytime, when most guests are away sightseeing but gets busy from the evening onwards.
We created a sonic ‘time machine’ to transport the listener to the final splendors of Imperial British India, using textures – discrete, periodic crackling sound of old radio and vinyl records -ear-picked historical recordings and contemporary works that honestly revisit the era or unearthing very rare, contextual recordings – such as a Hindi song praising the Viceroy and recordings of early Jazz in India.
To this ever-evolving music library, we are adding works that illustrate the early age of aviation in India, of which the Maharaja was a pioneer, with masterpieces from the large semi-arid zone that stretches from Jodhpur to Nouachkott.
Guest flow, too, influenced our musical selections. The afternoon music is at once artful and poetic to create a witty storyline punctuated by quirky and beautiful elements, yet has an easy-listening quality to avoid demanding too much attention from the guests. The sequencing production enhances this easy-listening quality, each track length ranging from 30 seconds to less than 4 minutes, to ensure a fast sequenced continuity of eclectic moments so that even a non-musical guest is never trapped in a difficult moment.
In the evening, the Music Curator player changes to the Sunset mood, also called ‘The GM’s Drink’, customized to delay the guests-flow to the restaurants Pillars and Risala. Later at night, it moves to a more mainstream vintage Jazz selection that raises imperceptibly the energy level for post-dinner drinks.
The richness and the very uniqueness of this selection make it a museum of aural curiosities and memorabilia, which is a pleasing invitation to engage and be inspired while being absolutely in tune with the room decor and the fantasy of its history.
Four public spaces that share a royal constant are encased in a martial and heroic architecture accentuated by trophies of wild animals and ancient weapons. The acoustics are exceptional.
We created multiple day parts and dedicated musical atmosphere for each venue and paid tribute to the original Palace Musician, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan (1922-2009), and his rich international musical legacy.
We softened the deep resonance in the majestic 105-foot high dome with a feminine breeze of heavenly harp and Indian flute.
On the Pillars Terrace overlooking the royal gardens, we used elegant strings of panoramic proportion to soundtrack the beauty of roaming peacocks.
At the Trophy Bar, we launched a musical ‘time travel machine’ to the quaintness of an early 20th-century salon.
Adorned by royal portraits, the Risala restaurant fine dines an imaginary dinner for royal guests of the last Empire to the sound of Victorian-era Pastoral music with echoes of Indian strains.
We sound-designed the lifestyle of Hyderabad’s rulers as an ‘Orientalised’ allegory of the Ottoman Dynasty. This unique musical trajectory between Hungary (the prime minister’s grand mother-in-law was Hungarian), Turkey and Hyderabad highlights a hitherto little known or neglected musical field within the study of Ottoman court music.
The Celeste restaurant: a ‘celeste’ is a 3 octaves metallophone keyboard of the 19th century. It’s soft and subtle timbre gave the instrument its name, meaning “heavenly” in French, which is the perfect adjective to the breakfast soundtrack.
The Continental menu at lunch is an opportunity to underline the western territories of the Ottoman Empire that stretched until Eger, Hungary. The soundtrack tackles the imagination of early 20th century ‘new folklores’ as many composers drew their inspiration from national folklore, often borrowing from Roma musicians to create their own vision of an exotic and largely imaginary Orient.
Dinner at the Celeste is a musical masquerade in grand palatial style. It is not easy to decide who is wearing the mask: is it a vintage American jazz band playing a Strauss waltz? Or a western European orchestra playing an Oriental Gypsy swing?
Music Curator was commissioned to illustrate musically the complex cultural warp and woof of this marquee destination, one of the ‘Jewels’ of the Taj Group.
Palace clientèle expect an immersive experience. Music Curator created the soundtrack of this luxurious world by connecting the eclectic cultural inspirations that were woven into the architecture and décor of the palace.
The music helps guests experience the nostalgia of a bygone era and feel a kinship with the lifestyle of Hyderabad’s rulers within this fabled display of Oriental extravaganza.
In the Venetian-esque Lobby and attached Museum, we staged the acoustic strains of an imaginary ‘composer in residence’, where graceful piano motifs are heard in the distance, exploring the works of Venetian composers like Claudio Monteverdi and Antonio Vivaldi who composed concertos for oriental lute with lyrical motifs in minor mode, revealing a Levantine influence.
The sunset at Gol Bungalow, an open-air lounge, is an invitation to an Istanbul-themed lounge in India. This is the sound of a new generation of composers who re-invent and re-orient the vibrant ancestral sound of their city. The playlist contextually matches the live performance of the Sufi musicians.
The evening at Gol Bungalow is a romantic love cocktail, where every night is Valentine for ever and for everyone in a number of languages such as English, Italian, Japanese… along with instrumental interludes of the deepest velvety smooth jazz. Each track is carefully ear-picked.
Adaa restaurant has a fine selection of classical and semi-classical instrumental Hindustani music, an anthology of beautiful bandishes from the last fifty years performed on a wide variety of instruments. It also includes the occasional Ottoman Court Music and Indian fusion.
In 2016, this fine dining Hyderabadi cuisine restaurant was included for the second year in a row among the ‘Top 100 Best Restaurants in the World’ by ‘Elite Traveler’, the only restaurant from South Asia in that list.
The Maldives are a luxury destination, so guests are expectedly sophisticated. They fly in from all over the world into these confetti spread in the vast Indian Ocean to sunbathe, snorkel, eat and drink, and then fly out again – not suspecting that they vacationed in the ‘Mediterranean of the East’, surrounded by ancient cultures with a very rich history.
We curated a deluxe compact disc – ear-picked compositions, sourced through hard to find specialists, that took the listener on a wonderful 70 minutes musical voyage around the Indian Ocean, along the fabled Spice Route of the Dhow Countries: from Madagascar to Zanzibar, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Western Java. The CD had liner notes, one page per track, describing in detail the cultural context of every track.
The guests discovered that this cluster of tiny islands in the Indian Ocean isn’t just ‘the acme of exoticism’ but are contained in and surrounded by ancient cultures, fabulous wealth and absolutely magnificent musical traditions. As a companion to this compact disc, we suggested that guests read Richard Hall’s unrivalled and instructive epic “Empires of the Monsoon”, a first-class, gripping panoramic study of the history of the Indian Ocean.
It is at that time also that we settled on the two axioms that would govern our work: “A Higher Experience” and “There is no luxury without culture”.