South African Innovation in Music & Technology: Sumeet Sarkar & Jonathan Smithers

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With origins dating back to 1884, The MIT Symphony Orchestra's central mission is the cultural enhancement of education at MIT by promoting music performance at the highest level of artistic excellence among MIT students, by nurturing new works and young artists, by developing and sustaining the widest possible audience. Having collaborated with musicians from New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music having brought together 200 international musicians, the orchestra features neo-contemporary music by renowned guest artists at the Kresge Auditorium.

Sumeet Sarkar is an Emmy Award-winning violinist, composer and orchestral manager of the MIT Orchestra with multi-Grammy winning artist Jacob Collier. He is an active film composer based in Los Angeles with works released on Netflix, Apple TV and Amazon including the 2020 Emmy Nominated Documentary "Home" and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Documentary. His recent works aim at music therapy for mental health awareness through ambient and orchestral compositions.

Assisting Sumeet Sarkar and the Orchestra, Mr. Smithers will join as a co-writer, producer, mix engineer and studio guitarist include:

Cymatic Chronicles Vol. 3 – a full-length album dedicated to mental health awareness and the issues surrounding it. Its purpose is to provide support to those dealing with such issues, meaning that we would need to approach the music as such.

Cymatic Chronicles Vol. 4 – this collection of soundtracks for placement in a film will be recorded by a live orchestra at Balboa Studios, Los Angeles.

Cymatic Chronicles Vol. 5 – a collaboration with the MIT Media Centre for a performance centered around music in augmented reality. This will see the production of music in an interactive form and will be recorded by a live orchestra at Balboa Studios, Los Angeles and Boston Massachusetts.

MIT Orchestra featuring Jacob Collier – the third and fourth productions of the MIT Orchestra feature multi-Grammy award-winning artist, Jacob Collier. Mr. Smithers will play the leading role of musician and session guitarist to play arrangements of Collier's music alongside Collier, as well as an extensive orchestra to be performed at the Kresge Auditorium.

Jonathan Smithers is an internationally acclaimed musician with extensive achievements ranging from live performances to original compositions for digital projects with hundreds of thousands of views streamed on Twitch. Smithers released his debut album "Honeybee" in 2019. The album and title track "Honeybee" were hailed as "proof of his uncompromising artistry." Mr. Smithers' leading projects involve his collaborations with the Hermitcraft server (part of the Minecraft phenomenon) a family of YouTube Creators with over 30 million subscribers combined.

As in-demand musician, he has collaborated with leading musicians, composers and creators, including Emmy award winning composer Richard Hartley; Paul Petersen and Patric van Blerk, founders of the label Cape Town Sound; renowned Multi-instrumentalist and Cape Town Jazz vocalist, arranger & band leader, Dave Ledbetter; and performances with Jesus Molina and Ronan Skillen. His impressive achievements have been featured by publications in the U.S. and internationally in Texx & the City, The Aesthete, Popshopfm, and the Hermitcraft Reddit.

Media Contact:
Sumeet Sarkar | Composer | Violinist | [email protected] | (818) 279-5682

SOURCE Sumeet Sarkar