Music makers: Arun Ghosh and Idris Rahman (second and third from left) perform at the festival; (below) Idris and Zoe Rahman

Something unusual was happening at Dartington Hall this Easter weekend. Deep in Devon, in the school started by Tagore’s friend, Leonard Elmhirst, the bard of Bengal was being remembered not just by song and dance and talks but by jazz bands from London who were interpreting his music in their own way.

Clarinettist Arun Ghosh was jumping up and down on stage like a rock star, with drums, tabla, piano and saxophone, providing a high-energy sound that had the audience swinging. The next day it was the turn of brother-sister duo Zoe and Idris Rahman to take the stage for a calmer evening of Tagore’s songs set to jazz.

Few in the audience had heard of Tagore before. They left with some idea of his poetry and philosophy. It was just the sort of thing that the festival organisers had conceived: bringing Tagore to a brand new audience and opening up his music to contemporary interpretation.

There was a time when even Zoe knew little of Tagore. Going through her father’s well-used collection of Rabindra Sangeet tapes was what introduced the jazz pianist to the poet-composer. Her father — Mizan Rahman — had fallen ill in 2005 and Zoe thought she would put some of his favourite tapes on a CD for him. Mizan, who was from Bangladesh, was always singing at home and exchanging music with his sister in Dhaka. “They would Skype each other and sing songs,” Zoe says. “It was incredible.”

Though she didn’t understand the lyrics, it was the melody that attracted her. Soon, she and her reed-playing brother started giving the Bengali songs a jazz interpretation with the piano and clarinet.

While the Rahman siblings traced their Bengali roots through their father’s love of music, jazz clarinettist Arun Ghosh found that a visit to his father’s village in Digsui in Hooghly took him closer to the music of Bengal — Rabindra Sangeet, baul and bhatiali. It was the start of his journey into exploring jazz and Bengali music. His composition — the melodic River Song — played at Dartington was his tribute to his father’s village.

Son of Bengali father Neel Ratan Ghosh and Sindhi mother Manju Bhavnani, Arun was born in London and brought up in Bolton and Manchester. He studied music at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then the clarinet at the Royal College of Music.

“It was completely Western classical music up to this stage,” he says. “But I had always loved jazz, and soon I started working on jazz and knew that was for me.”

Zoe and Idris — born in Chichester to an English mother and a Bengali father — also grew up with classical music. “But as teenagers we loved jazz,” Zoe says. Playing with her brother became the most natural thing to do. “Music is in our blood,” Idris adds.

Zoe learnt the piano while Idris opted for the clarinet. “It was very white, very suburban, very boring,” laughs Idris, while Zoe, two years older, nods. The pair have an infectious charm, both on and off stage. On stage, it is Zoe who does the talking, while offstage Zoe confesses it is Idris she is listening to.

Zoe studied music at Oxford and classical piano at the Royal Academy of Music but thought “it didn’t suit” her. “I found I preferred the self expression of jazz,” she says. A scholarship took her to Boston where she learnt jazz and started her own band with bassist Joshua Davis and drummer Bob Moses. Idris too studied music at Oxford but found that he preferred jazz to classical. He became part of the London band Soothsayers playing world music.

Jazz is Ghosh’s great passion too. Influenced by musicians such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis, the 35 year-old says, however, he also enjoyed the classical music of Ravi Shankar, Bismillah Khan and Ali Akbar Khan. And when he listened to Sylheti baul singer Amir-ud-din, he thought he’d “found the blues in his voice,” he says.

“It was about finding my personal sound, and so I started improvising and composing using Indian taals with jazz instruments and folk aesthetic.”

Ghosh, who is married to Nigerian-born Chrys Chijiutomi and is the father of three children — Malakhai, Luka and Zubin — first performed at the London Jazz festival in 2007. His debut album Northern Namaste was released in 2008 and the latest Primal Odyssey (2011) saw him combine Indo-jazz with a Bengali flavour. Very much a rising star, the high-energy clarinettist has performed at venues such as Ronnie Scotts and the South Bank, bringing Tagore and Nazrul to London’s music scene.

Zoe and Idris have made their name too. In 2001, Zoe’s debut album The Cynic got her nominated as the “Rising Star” in the BBC Jazz Awards while her second album Melting Pot (2006) was nominated for the Mercury Prize. It was with Where Rivers Meet (2008) that she started working with Idris and experimenting with Indian sounds. Her latest album Kindred Spirits (2012) has three Tagore songs and once again, Idris on clarinet.

The Rahman siblings’ gentle jazz interpretation of Tagore’s Tumi Ele is in homage to their father. “The first time he heard us play a Tagore song, he had tears in his eyes. He said: ‘Now I know you can play’. We knew there was something in there. The melodies really caught us,” says Idris. Their father died two weeks ago, and Zoe and Idris dedicated their Dartington concert both to Tagore and the memory of their father.

“Tagore was a very creative person, inspired by music from around the world,” Zoe Rahman says. “I don’t think he would mind our interpretation.” Given the rousing ovations that the musicians received, he certainly wouldn’t.