In July last year, Indo-American jazz pianist Charu Suri played at Mumbai's Royal Opera House, in a show titled Spirit of New Orleans Jazz. Besides some of the old jazz classics, she showcased some of her own compositions, blending Indian classical ragas with jazz.

Suri returns to the venue on February 14, in a Valentine’s Day special concert titled Love Songs From New Orleans: The Romance Of Jazz. She will be accompanied by her sister Sharmi Surianarain on vocals, Shashank Das on bass and Arjun Chakraborty on drums.

"New Orleans has such a great repertoire of romantic songs, from La Vie En Rose to Louisiana Fairytale to Hello Dolly. Even Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World is a love song. There are songs on New Orleans, songs for New Orleans," she says.

Suri says the response to these songs on her last tour, which also covered New Delhi and Goa, was extremely heartening. "I had drummer Joe Lastie with me and the audience loved him," she says. She had earlier performed in 2022 at the Experimental Theatre in Nariman Point with vocalist Shreya Bhattacharya, bassist Avishek Dey, guitarist Srinjoy Ghatak and drummer Arjun Chakraborty.

Born in Madurai, Suri studied in Africa and Chennai as a child before settling in the US. Though her early exposure was to western classical piano, she later began composing tunes blending Indian ragas with jazz. Her father got a job in Africa as the head of a record label, and that was when she had her first brush with the piano at the age of five. In Chennai, she took lessons from Geeta Menon. "She was arguably the best teacher there, and was very disciplined, insisting I practise hard. We did a lot of repetitions till I got the phrasing, tone and colour right. With her training, I began playing complex pieces when I was seven, and started winning competitions," she recalls.

Suri's switch to jazz came when she attended a show at the Preservation Hall, a venue in New Orleans which aims to protect and preserve the spirit of New Orleans jazz. She says, "The moment I heard them, I knew this was what I wanted to do. I also loved the camaraderie in the audience. That's what drew me to jazz."

It didn't stop there, of course, as Suri slowly developed a style of blending ragas with jazz. She elaborates, "It came about quite organically. It's not something I set out to do. But there were tunes playing in my head, because of my exposure to Indian music, and I started experimenting. I played some such stuff to my trio and they didn't easily understand what I was doing. They said it didn't sound like jazz but something very different."

The first India-born female artiste to perform at New York's Carnegie Hall, Suri has released the jazz record Lollipops For Breakfast and the raga jazz albums The Book Of Ragas, Ragas & Waltzes and Rags & Ragas. But a lot of work went into their creation. Says the pianist, "I learn the raga first. If I don't know raga, I learn it, like I did with Desh. I use the melody and improvise and later add jazz-like harmony. It may not be the same approach each time but what's important is that I live the raga for a while. Without that, raga jazz cannot happen."

On her album The Book Of Ragas, Suri had vocalist Apoorva Mudgal singing traditional compositions like Ni Saiyyon Assan in Bhimpalasi and Baju Band in Bhairavi. "I laid the jazz framework and Apoorva chose the ghazal or verse to go over that," she says. Her latest album Rags & Ragas features bassist John Patitucci, and drummers Steve Gadd and Joe Lastie. "It was my first real raga jazz album in the way I wanted the form to be. The opening track Bourbon Street Stroll featuring Steve Gadd is in raag Hemant. There's a tribute to Miles Davis using the So What chord which dovetails into raag Bageshri," she points out.

Last year, Suri collaborated with singer Cassandra Kubinski on the song Lately. The two have been good friends who have also been collaborating at shows, and it was natural for them to record at some point.

Based in Verona, New Jersey, Suri spends a lot of time attending local concerts and checking out different musicians. Her husband Matthew plays the trombone and their daughter learns the flute. A lot of her time is spent practising and composing, and she wants to do more raga jazz shows on her next visits. She's already created a sizeable repertoire in that style, and there's more in the pipeline.