AS I SING

LISTEN

BIO
She has had two distinct careers. First and foremost as a jazz musician, composer, arranger and band leader (she is empanelled as jazz ambassador for India by the ICCR – Indian Council For Cultural Affairs); then as a published author of 4 titles. She is also passionate about dog rescues, and is active in the community, launching a podcast in 2022, to promote the cause of TheIndieDog.

Radha Thomas was born in Tamil Nadu in India, grew up in Mumbai and Delhi and then left for the USA to pursue her dream of becoming a jazz singer. Although jazz was (and continues to be) her driving passion, it never provided her a lucrative career, one that allowed her to focus on music alone.

She spent 20 years in New York, holding a variety of day-jobs in the travel and publishing industries, while singing in clubs at night, performing and recording in the city. She returned to India and formed the band UNK: the Radha Thomas Ensemble. The band travelled India extensively and performed as much as the genre permitted. 

ALBUMS
Dropping on March 15, 2024, ‘As I Sing’ is an organic and pure guitar-and-voice duo album with some of today’s most sought after guitar players including Reg Schwager, Pete McCann, Paul Meyers, Tom Dempsey. 10 jazz standards receive a careful and fresh makeover.

According to Scott Yanow, jazz journalist/historian and author of 12 books including The Jazz Singers, “Duets can be the most difficult setting for a singer,  for there is nowhere to hide, every note is important, and the contrast of sound with silence is an essential skill. Radha sounds quite comfortable yet stimulated by the guitarists on As I Sing. She has a soft and alluring voice, is an imaginative scat-singer with her own style, and is quite versatile. 

“Radha Thomas is heard throughout this project at the peak of her creative powers. Performing a set of ten of her favorite standards, she makes each song her own. Among the highlights are her scatting on a partly-disguised rendition of “Summertime,” the ease that she displays while singing the potentially tricky Clifford Brown melody “Daahoud,” a very appealing rendition of Artie Shaw’s “Moon Ray” with McCann, and her close interaction with Schwager on “Autumn Leaves” although each performance is worthy in its own way. Whether it is performing heartfelt ballad singing (her aching long notes on Benny Golson’s “I Remember Clifford” are particularly memorable), creating melodic variations as on the second chorus of “It Could Happen To You,” or effortlessly handling the interval jumps on Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz,” she clearly has her own voice. ‘As I Sing’ is well worth several listens. “

Her 2020 album Bangalore Blues is a piano/voice duo with Berkeley-alumnus, piano player Aman Mahajan with whom she has worked for the past 10 years. The seven-track album released by SubContinental Records hit the air world-wide on CD Baby, Amazon. iTunes, Tidal, Deezer, Google Music, Saavn, Gaana, OK Listen, Spotify, Pandora etc. The cover artwork for the album has been created by Paul Fernandes, featuring that most resonant of city landmark’s, iconic Koshy’s restaurant.

Also launched in 2020, the 4-track EP ‘Vocalese: A Tribute to Chet Baker’ features Thomas’s original vocalese lyrics to the legendary trumpet player Chet Baker’s horn solos on some beloved jazz standards.  “Ron McClure who is a bass player primarily, but a fine pianist too, plays with me on this album. In an odd coincidence, many years ago he was at a Thanksgiving party at Chet’s house (he would play bass for him occasionally) and was looking for an apartment. ‘Take mine,’ said Chet, and the result is that Ron now lives in Chet’s old apartment. Ron told me that before he came to the studio to record this album, he listened to the walls carefully to see if Chet had left any music to linger,” said Thomas.

Her own band UNK: The Radha Thomas Ensemble based in Bangalore is one of India’s most dynamic bands featuring musicians from all over the globe. Their album ‘I Only Have Eyes For You,’  received excellent reviews and airplay all over America.

Radha Thomas began headlining as a singer while still in her teens in a rock and roll band called Human Bondage, which was India’s most popular band in the 70s. She soon developed a strong taste for jazz, which is her favourite kind of music. She also began combining the tonal complexities of jazz with the rhythmic nuances of Indian classical music.

Thomas (nee Shottam) represented India at European jazz festivals and made her way to New York, the home of jazz, where she lived and performed for almost 20 years with such musicians as Michael Brecker, John Scofield, John Faddis, Alex Blake, Buddy Williams, Harvey Mason, Anthony Jackson, John Abercrombie, Ryo Kawasaki, Joe Farrell and many others in some of NYC’s most famous jazz clubs including Sweet Basil, The Bottom Line, Alice Tully Hall and more.

The album “Mirror of my Mind” showcased her talents in the USA for the second time in 1979. You can listen to the album here. 

Prior to that, she tested the waters, making a brief appearance on the album ‘Ring Toss‘ with some background vocals and scats. Here’s where you can hear her Indian classical vocal training. This came first from Kumar Gandharva in New Delhi at the Gandharva Maha Vidyalaya, and subsequently with Ustad Farid Ud Din Dagar of the famed Dagar Brothers in the dying art of Drupad singing.

She has performed in London, France, Poland, Germany the Far East, many cities across the USA, and of course all over India in leading jazz clubs.

She hosted a weekly jazz show on Radio Indigo in Bangalore.

MUSIC VIDEOS
After COVID attacked the world in 2020 putting an end to live music performances, Thomas turned to the internet and virtual collaboration with jazz musicians world-wide. In a single year, from 2020 to 2021, she recorded 52 videos with her original music and jazz standards along with some of the world’s most talented musicians from Russia, Poland, Italy, USA, Germany, England, India and other places. She has never met those musicians and hopes to fix that  one day. Maybe.

BOOKS
Thomas has written four books.

Dog Tails: A true story of a few entitled street dogs in Bangalore, was donated to CARE, an animal rescue and welfare organisation in 2022.  It reached the Amazon best-seller list and all proceeds went to the dogs at the shelter.

‘The Cauliflower Diet’ released by Penguin Random House in February, 2016 received rave reviews from almost all major Indian media. It is a  low-carb diet book in which she has created several unique recipes using the cauliflower as a substitute for rice and other carb-heavy flour.

‘Men On My Mind’ (2012) and ‘More Men on My Mind (2014) were her first two novels, published by Rupa, and have received wide acclaim for being unconventional and edgy. They follow a young woman’s quest for good sex.

EXECUTIVE VP & EDITOR AT EXPLOCITY.COM
Explocity.com is a publishing company in Bangalore. Thomas was editor, columnist and general dogsbody. She quickly gained popularity for her column ‘Between the Sexes,’ a look at the odd way in which men and women see each other. She also wrote extensively on health, diet and fitness for the magazine The Bangalore Monthly. She conceived of, and produced a series of food guides in the six major metros called, ‘The Kingfisher Explocity Great Food Guide.’ They very popular and sold all over India regularly from around 2009 to around 2012, by which time the internet had seriously made a dent in the book publishing industry. She also conceived and produced a newspaper for Café Coffee Day, called ‘Café Beat’ which addressed people between the ages of 15 and 25, dealing with issues of concern to that target audience.