Prateek Bhaduri Reveals the Symphony of Success in Crafting Unforgettable Live Concert Experiences!

by  EVENTFAQS Bureau Entertainment | December 1, 2023 | Interview

Prateek Bhaduri

Prateek Bhaduri is a Multi Award winning singer and live performer who has won Wow Awards 2023 and 2017, Best Pop artist 2019 and 2016 at the Radio city freedom awards. He has travelled worldwide and done over 2000 shows including corporate gigs, weddings, music Fest’s and club concerts.

Prateek has collaborated with Hollywood composer Greg Ellis and shared the stage with Ranveer Singh, Bickram Ghosh, R Madhavan and Khurram Waqar from Coke Studio Pakistan. His original songs Andekhi, inner love has featured on Vh1, Songdew tv, 9XM and all national and international radio with over 6 million streams across platforms.

Apart from doing playback for Bollywood and Bangla film projects, he is soon to be debuting playing an acting cameo role in Aayush Sharma’s upcoming movie Ruslaan in January 2024.

In an exclusive interview with EVENTFAQS Media, Prateek Bhaduri, Multi-Awarding Singer, Performer and Songwriter, his key elements of creating memorable music experience during a live concert and the challenges he faces while balancing corporate events and private functions.

Q. How do you prepare for live performances and adapt to diverse event audiences? Can you share any standout experiences or challenges you've encountered?

My shows and concerts take me all over the world and it’s important for me to have the same crew and team travelling with me to maintain the same standard wherever we go. For this reason, I usually have a standard operating procedure that I follow that works for me. It comes with one understanding the client, the audience age profile, the region and the kind of people in majority attending and their musical tastes. Besides that, I always stick to my strengths as a singer and performer no matter what. There are those highlights in my set that will always be there in every gig no matter what cause those elements make my concert special. I feel an artist needs to be in control of things to give his best performance wise and too much of micromanagement can affect that at times.

One thing that I pay a lot of attention is to quality sound checks, my tech crew travelling along with me and us doing thorough checks on maintaining quality with regards to stage, sound and our technical rehearsals prior to performance to ensure we give clients memories for a lifetime of Memorable experiences.

I remember doing this gig where the bride was very persistent on just English pop in her wedding due to a large NRI and Expat attendance and I with the amount of shows I had done knew for a fact that the highest profile Indian audiences also will crave Bollywood and Punjabi as the night goes by. So I went back to my studio curated an entire set that had English pop hits mashed up with Bollywood and Punjabi keeping the soundscape very modern pop and international and the client was left spellbound and so was the entertainment company curating the event.

So I feel it’s all about taking a brief and also ensuring you add a little bit of yourself to it in good measure to ensure you can give your best and leave a lasting impact on the audience.

The greatest challenge for me has always been dealing with compromised sound check timings during a performance with tight travel itineraries especially in unfamiliar new cities or countries. Flight delays are another unforeseen circumstance we have to be prepared for.

Q. When it comes to creating memorable musical experiences at events, what do you consider the key elements? How do you collaborate with event organizers to align your performance with different themes?

I feel that creating memorable event experiences comes with the ability to have a vision and the key elements are first building a strong bond with the event company curating the event as well because they can make you vision turn to reality with the best kind of support in production and sound. The second is the rehearsals and preparations with my own team and crew keeping in mind the length of the show, the kind of audience and what kind of a set I will be performing. For example, my wedding sets with always have a lot more Bollywood dance music and Punjabi compared to my original music, rock ballads etc. that would be in high demand in a club, music festival setup or even a private gig.

Q. Balancing artistic expression and meeting event organizer expectations can be challenging. How do you manage this balance, especially for corporate events or private functions?

I feel communication is key. I always stress on how we need an uninterrupted 2-hour sound check. There are certain industry standard expectations from performers like myself in a wedding / private gig and a corporate event as well. So firstly my first goal is to make an event agency realise that we both have the same goal that is to create an incredible night for the client and that’s not possible without them giving me the best production and sound support they can deliver. Second I align a conference call with the client or get a detailed brief from the event organiser on the smallest and largest details of the event, the audience profile and the kind of set expected. The brief always helps me plan and suggest how my set could be designed for the performance.

Q. Can you provide insights into your live performances, recognized for their intense energy and dynamism spanning a variety of genres, including dance music and soulful pop ballads?

My live performances are high in energy, very interactive and have a lot of versatility in musical genres from pop, funk, dance music to soulful love ballads as well me singing in Hindi, English and Punjabi. The set also has many surprise elements and crowd engagement work involving audiences real time keeping them hooked and enthralled.

I try to do something new and special in each gig. Also, many event industry guys tell me that my sets USP is the effortless flow between languages and genres along with quality singing and high energy performance in balance. A lot of time in other cases either the quality of musicianship drops in search of energy or musicianship is high but performance is lacking interaction and connect. My strength is that I do both well and also have a knack of understanding the pulse of my audience to keep them going throughout the night. It’s quite special for people to see a singer sing a rock ballad like I want to break free by Queen, a Punjabi rager like Tare gin and a love ballad by Arijit Singh flawlessly along with his own original pop hit in one gig with highly energetic band and an interactive power packed performer in me. So I feel I am that complete package every event company out there is looking for and that’s my biggest strength.

Q. Having performed at various events, what advice would you give to event planners or those booking live performers? Are there crucial factors that contribute to a successful collaboration between artists and organizers?

Again smooth communication is so important. Giving the perfect brief and even having a con call with the client if necessary to check if the requirement has been understood perfectly by the artist, the agency and the client. We need everyone in the same page. Keeping finalised communications on mail and living up to the promises made by both in every respect. Paying attention to detail in keeping the artist comfortable as well as ensuring an artist’s tech, production and other needs are well looked after so that he or she can give their best on stage.

What both the organisers and artist needs to know is that our goal is to create an incredible audio visual experience for our clients and that can only happen with a fluid understanding among us and a common vision to create a brilliant event experience for the client.

Individual egos from the organiser or the artist I feel can be self-destructive and that’s one thing I never allow myself to bring in a room with regards to my performances because a memorable night is a win for me and thereby everyone involved and I expect the same from an organiser.