Salima Barday is a diverse musician working in London, and can be found in orchestras, chamber groups, musicals, recording sessions, rock and jazz bands. Now playing with Southbank Sinfonia, she also performs with the English National Ballet, British Philharmonic, and Oxford Philomusica among others. She has recorded in the Dairy Studios for Nitin Sawhney, toured for Jeff Wayne’s musical War of the Worlds, and regularly writes and performs original music with her band Flux, which is influenced by Western and Indian classical, jazz, popular and urban music. Salima has been featured in the short documentary film The Bass Player, which was shown in March 2009 at the Royal Society of the Arts as part of Cineforum’s Muslim Women: Visibility and Leadership.
Salima is passionate about her off-stage work with communities and education. She regularly works with the London Symphony Orchestra Discovery programme after having played with the orchestra as a String Scheme participant in 2009. She works with the Digital Technology group to involve young people in creative music-making projects, LSO St. Luke’s projects for both LSO Fusion and disability participants, as well as various workshops in the Barbican Centre and London schools/universities. She has taught music at youth camps such as Camp Mosaic in New York City 2009, coached community ensembles, and volunteered to play in hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care facilities.
Salima completed her Master of Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on a full scholarship studying with Thomas Martin, earning her Bachelor of Music at the Juilliard School, also on full scholarship, studying with Timothy Cobb. She played Principal Bass for both schools, performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in Avery Fisher Hall, co-leading the Juilliard Orchestra during its China Tour in 2008, and playing Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben in the Barbican Hall. She earned the distinctive Peter Mennin Prize for her outstanding achievement and leadership at the Juilliard School.
