Zakir on teaming up with Louis Banks (pictured above) and Shankar Mahadevan

“I am looking forward to meeting the entire band. When we go on stage we spontaneously connect. It’s more of a conversation. Someone comes up with an idea and throws it out to somebody and says, ‘What do you think of that?’ The other musician takes it and says, ‘This is good, how about adding this?’ You talk music, you converse musically, then it’s possible for you to be able to create something.

“When I work with a musician, I know what he likes to drink, what he likes to eat, what his family is about, what his son and daughter are doing. Then only, after talking to him about the world and his likes and dislikes and my likes and dislikes, then we go on stage and we carry on the conversation. The difference is instead of speaking Hindi or English or French or Italian, we’re now speaking the language of music.”