A 14-piece jazz ensemble featuring musicians from India and the United States will take the stage at RNR Auditorium, Filmnagar, on June 24 in what is being billed as India’s first full-scale big band jazz concert. Curated by concert pianist, IIT Hyderabad Adjunct Professor, and ArtHome Foundation founder Timothy Marthand, the ensemble is led by Boston’s 2025 Jazz Artist of the Year Dr Jared Sims, alongside trumpeter Doug Olsen and trombonist Reggie Watkins, with Indian jazz saxophonist Ryan Sadri anchoring the Indian contingent.
For him, the event is a natural progression of decades spent building Hyderabad’s performing arts ecosystem.
“For the past 20 years, we have been consistently building a community of concert-goers in Hyderabad,” he says, adding, “A big band has never been presented in India at this level. This is a first, an experiment, and a pioneering move. We had the relationships, the audience, and the infrastructure. The question was not whether to do it. It was when.”
Bringing together a 14-piece American-Indian ensemble was no small feat. “You need artists who are not only technically excellent but who can listen to each other, adapt in real time, and build something together in a very short rehearsal window,” he explains. He credits Ryan Sadri with helping assemble the Indian contingent, describing him as someone who understands both musical worlds.
For Timothy, Hyderabad is uniquely positioned to host such an event. While the city’s economic transformation is widely acknowledged, he believes its cultural story is still unfolding.
He notes, “Every great city eventually faces the question of what it stands for beyond commerce. Hyderabad is at that moment now. It has the foundation, the ambition, and the audience. What it needs is programming and infrastructure worthy of what the city has become.”
The collaboration itself emerged from relationships built over decades. He shares, “The artist community is more closely knit than people realise. Once Jared Sims was on board, the ensemble took shape around him naturally.”
What makes the concert particularly compelling, according to Timothy, is the meeting of two improvisational traditions. He shares, “Neither side is imitating the other. They are finding a shared language in real time, and the audience gets to witness that process as it unfolds.”
Though trained as a classical pianist at the International Piano Foundation in Lake Como, Timothy sees the concert as part of a broader commitment to excellence across genres.
At the heart of his work is a larger vision: strengthening India’s performing arts infrastructure. “The vision has always been to build the performing arts infrastructure that this country deserves. Every concert I produce, whether it is a solo piano recital or a 14-piece ensemble, is part of that,” he notes.
He points to a significant gap in the country. “India does not have a single purpose-built, acoustically uncompromised concert hall comparable to leading global venues,” he says, adding that ArtHome is working to change that.
For first-time jazz listeners, Timothy has a simple message: “You do not need any prior knowledge. You just need to be in the room.”
What awaits them, he says, is something that cannot be replicated through a screen. “Fourteen people creating sound together in real time, responding to each other, taking risks, building something in the moment. Not just hearing music, but being inside it,” he concludes.
