Celebrate music with young talent

The city's very own instrumentalist fusion-artist Sanjeev Pandkar talks to The GUIDE about his music, Folk-Rock band ufffd Moonbeans and upcoming performance over this weekend

Celebrate music with young talent

The band Moonbeans comprises of Sanjeev Pandkar (guitars / vocal), Bharghav (guitars / vocal), Sundar (bass), Rasika (vocals), Harshad (keyboards) and Ananth (drums and percussions)

The band Moonbeans

Moonbeans is of youngsters and by youngsters

It has been three years since we formed Moonbeans. The band members of Moonbeans are all my students. Some are aspiring singers and few are musicians. They have balanced their work while playing for the band.

Drummer Sanjeev Pandkar

As a fusion artist, I formed this band and I am hopeful that this platform will help these young musicians. Moonbeans also includes a female lead vocalist. Having a female vocal in the band adds a different sound to it. You can come up with a range of different songs and add variations through a female voice.

Music itself is an inspiration

When we talk about influence or inspiration, apparently every musician is inspired by somebody or the other. I would like to say that Rush and Yes are my inspirations along with the artists from Pop genre as I have been following them since I grew up listening to them.

Not easy way ahead in music

Making a successful career out of music is very difficult. It takes a lot of energy and hard work. There are not too many shows happening around; plus prompt recognition to an artist is difficult too. One has to build one’s own path. Even getting your record out is a tough task and hence aspiring artists are choosing Internet as the medium to publish their work. To be successful in the field of music, one needs to work with good artists for a span of 10 to 15 years, which will give one recognition and an identity. Our advice is that practice hard and be patient; a mantra of success if you are eyeing a career in this field.

Pune audience is very knowledgeable

Pune has an evolved audience for music. They have knowledge of most music genres right from Rock to Jazz. They don’t take any crap. Hence while forming Moonbeans, we decided to focus on our favorite genre — Folk-Rock as there are already many Retro and Pop bands around.This will give something different to the city audience. For Moonbeans’s performance in the city this weekend, we will be performing the covers of Coldplay, Rolling Stones and Jack Johnson.