How London-based Malaysian Ibrahim Aziz is helping fuel a viola da gamba revival

Sometimes even the best-laid plans sometimes go awry and in Ibrahim Aziz’s case, it was overlooking the fact that there would be fireworks going off during the recording of his new album.

“The last session of the recording happened to coincide with Deepavali, and when it got dark, the celebrations and fireworks started. We had no choice but to carry on recording in small patches with pauses in between, while we waited for the explosions to subside! I don’t think you can hear anything in the CD, but you never know,” says KL-born Ibrahim, 42, who is now based in London.