by Romy Beckman
Renowned bassist Mohini Dey returned to Newport in 2026, less than a week after the release of her most recent album, The Dey Way. Previously a supporting instrumentalist at last year’s Newport Jazz Festival, she is now the star of her own show, a role she appears to have been born for, although one that she never dreamed she would find herself in. Mohini Dey is an incredibly talented performer and arranger, globally recognized as one of the most innovative and versatile bassists in music. A couple hours after her set at the 2026 Newport Jazz Festival, I had the privilege of asking her a few questions about her career, her creative process, and the experience of performing live for an audience.
Romy Beckman: I saw you last year at Newport Jazz playing with Willow and I thought in some ways you stole the show. And then here we are just one year later, and you have your own set under your name.
Mohini Dey: It’s so magical. It’s such a full circle moment. I didn’t know back then that I was going to be back at the same festival with my own music.
Romy: What does it feel like to be performing your music and with your band, rather than supporting another artist’s set?
Mohini: It’s crazy. But it’s crazy in a good way, in the best way possible. When you don’t expect something and you’re given the flowers, it’s surprising, but also shows you that you’re here to do more, and you’re expected. And the audience, they show me so much love and it’s only fair that I keep writing my music because they love it. Before I released my debut album, I didn’t know that there was a community out there for me independently, because I was only playing for other artists. The first 15 years of my music career was spent playing as a sideman for the Bollywood music industry. And then I moved to America like four or five years ago with no expectations. I connected with like-minded people, did one-off projects, recorded stuff, and then Willow’s management hit me up. That was two years ago, or less… Yeah, two years ago.
Romy: So still very recent.
Mohini: Yeah, still very recent. And within two weeks of me moving to America, I got the gig. And I had asked them, are you guys sure that you want me? Because I’m quite a frontman, you know, and I wanted to make sure that they’re making the right decision for their music. And I heard the music and it was terrific. It was fabulous. And I could see myself in that music setting. It was the perfect setting for me so when you said that I quite stole the show, I got that so much throughout the entire tour. We did the Childish Gambino tour, we did the Coldplay tour, we did Tiny Desk, we did Jimmy Fallon, and all these things. Chris from Coldplay, he comes to our green room and he says, I watch you on Instagram and I’m a big fan. And I’m like, WHAT?! (laughter) It’s hilarious to me. Because social media brings people together like that. It makes the world so small in the best way, you know? Of course, there’s downsides to that, too. But I think in my world, it worked the best way possible for me. I was just putting myself out there and I see social media as a tool for documenting my stories and my experiences and being very open-minded, free-minded and just trying everything and if it works it works, if it doesn’t work, stop it right there, move on, you know, because we only have one life. We got to give it a shot, right? And then you get judged for it. That’s a whole other thing but, yeah, I never stop. I keep going.
And I think there’s so much more to being a musician, you know? There’s so much more we do other than playing our instrument. We are our own publicists, we’re our own marketing people. We know what works because there’s a fan base that we have created through our music and we’re telling our stories and somehow they are able to relate to it. So being back to this festival with my music, it’s sort of magical, to be honest. I released my new album, just on the 20th of July, the day I turned 30. So not even a week ago. And seeing the response, seeing the stats and everything, I never expected that from my life. Touring the world with my band, with my music was never in my notebook, in my dream book. It was always like, okay, I’ll just keep doing music, I’ll play for people, connect with like minded people and surround myself with smart people. But I never wanted to tour the world with my music. It kind of just happened. Very naturally. And now I just… I’m owning it. Doing it, you know?
Romy: Congratulations, that’s awesome. I wanted to ask more about the actual experience of performing music live. Some people describe it as being exhilarating and other people find it nerve wracking. To me, you look very comfortable on this stage, but maybe that’s a facade, I don’t know. What is that experience like for you?
Mohini: Yes, I am very comfortable on stage. I think when I get up on stage, I kind of transform into a whole different person. I feel like a diva on stage. Off stage, I’m not very diva. Off stage, I’m very introverted. But on stage, you can feel the comfort because I’ve been doing this for a long time and so there’s experience involved. There’s the freeness of talking to people and being able to interact with the audience because that’s part of the performance. If you’re not in contact with them and you’re not making any eye contact and you’re looking down all the time, it affects the performance. You can play the music, you can have all that chop, but also not talk to people properly and not make eye contact and they won’t really connect with you as much. So I think it’s equally important to interact with people as well as being able to play. It took me a long time to get comfortable with the talking bits. Now it just kind of flows. But back in the day, if you were talking to me five, six years ago, I would not be as comfortable on stage as you see me now. I would not talk that much. I am very comfortable now but it took me a long time to get there.
Romy: I’m curious to know what the relationship between improvisation and intention is like when you’re creating new work in the studio, and then also when you’re performing live. To what extent was the set that you just performed at Newport planned?
Mohini: It’s not completely planned. There’s a lot of space for improvisation, because all the people in the band are are improvisers. So I like to capture each one’s personality in the set. It’s part of my set, everybody knows when it’s coming. We don’t know what’s going to come, but we know when. I carve it out. Okay, now this is your spot, this is your spot, this is your spot. And we know how we are going to resolve it so there are no loose ends and loose threads, because it’s a tight performance. Also, we didn’t get to play my full set. My full show is usually two hours and this was about 45 minutes, I think, which is pretty short.
When I’m writing in the studio, I write for the people I plan to feature. And sometimes some ideas will come to me and I try to represent my culture. I feel like that’s my biggest strength, being able to blend the rhythmic concepts that were part of my foundation growing up in India—all the konnakol, the ta-ka-di-mi ta-ki-ta—with jazz harmony. So when people hear my music, they hear a very strong sense of rhythm with jazz progression. Non-functional harmony, functional harmony. Weird melodies happening over cool changes and then there’s the fucked up, messed up polyrhythmic head, accompanying that. Or there’s an A section with a bridge where five-over-four is happening, or seven-over-four. The way we feel rhythm, or I feel rhythm rather, is very different compared to the way jazz musicians feel rhythm. So when they hear my music, they can hear the elements of jazz, but they also can’t really figure out what the time is behind the lines. So it’s really cool for me to see, especially when I’m rehearsing with them… Like I just did this event with six drummers, Dennis Chambers, Laurenell Lewis, Eric Moore, Gergo Borlai, Andy Prado, and Marco Cirigliano—six drummers playing at the same time. I wrote a song for six drummers, two keyboarders, and myself, bass, and saxophone. So it’s interesting to hear them talk and explain how they feel it because it’s so different from how I feel it. But that’s the beautiful thing about music: no matter how you’re feeling it, you’re able to arrive at the same point and play the same music and be able to connect still, you know?
Mohini Dey is currently on tour across the United States. Listen to her newest album The Dey Wey, on all streaming platforms.
Relevant links: https://mohinideybass.in/, https://mohinideybass.in/tour
