Suren de Saram

  • Artist

Suren is a versatile drummer and percussionist, being a performer of different genres of music: solo and orchestral percussion, jazz, improvisation and rock. Making music has been part of his life since early childhood.

For the past seven years he has been the drummer in the internationally renowned band Bombay Bicycle Club which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies of their albums worldwide. Their most recent album, 2014’s So Long See You Tomorrow, won the Ivor Novello album award and was also nominated for the Mercury Prize. The group has toured extensively over the past few years, playing at venues and festivals on every continent (except Antarctica!).

Together with this, Suren has regularly performed with the Oberon Symphony Orchestra as timpanist in such great works as Verdi’s Requiem, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, Brahms’ Violin Concerto and symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Schubert and Tchaikovsky. As a marimba player, he has taken part in recitals at the Sound Festival, Scotland and in the Cevennes, France. In 2008 at the Konzerthaus, Berlin, he premiered John Mayer’s final work, written for him for vibraphone, xylophone & sitar with the composer’s son Jonathan Mayer on sitar. Three other works have been written for him for cello & percussion.

Suren is an experienced improviser and performer of jazz, and is learning the tabla as well as the Kandyan drum of Sri Lanka.

Performance

Rohan de Saram, Suren de Saram & Ryan Drucker