Home » Jazz Musicians » Bishu Chattopadhyay

Bishu Chattopadhyay

Bishu Chattopadhyay is a New York City musician and a band leader, has collaborated as a jazz bassist with Rita Sahai and many known jazz performers in the San Francisco Bay area and in New York City. Bishu established two bands: ‘Bengal and Beyond’ and ‘Time is Now not Money’ in San Francisco, where he performed. Mr. Chattopadhyay currently leads two bands in New York City: ‘Bishu Chattopadhyay All Stars’ and ‘BC Jazz Now.’

Bishu Chattopadhyay was born in Kolkata, India and is a founding member of the legendary band Moheener Ghoraguli. Bishu just released a new album called Kolkata Stories. Kolkata Stories has ten of Mr. Chattopadhyay’s compositions that were inspired by his three-month unexpected lockdown in Kolkata in spring 2020. The compositions continue to uniquely express the intersection of jazz and Indian influences in Chattopdhyay’s body of work. It has elements/inspiration of Kolkata and Indian music.

Bishu Chattopadhyay: Kolkata Stories

Read "Kolkata Stories" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
March 27, 2022

Given this album's title, the fact that the leader's previous album was titled Harlem Meets Hooghly (self-produced, 2020), and even the song titles on this release, it's not unrealistic to be looking for an Indo-jazz fusion release in the vein of John McLaughlin, Warren Senders or simakDialog. But despite the Indian album and song titles, this is a straight-ahead post-bop album, closer to Monty Alexander than McLaughlin. Only in an occasional passage does one hear influences from the ...