One thing as you can hear with the original tracks is just how much bending and melisma the lead lines use. Pretty much constantly! This is going to make it very difficult to pull off without either setting up a chord sequence or using a track so you can use that left hand glued to the bender (use markers in the sequence if you want flexibility with the structure for a live show).

One thing that a lot of people miss is that the very place that real instruments tend to bend the MOST is across chord boundaries, the very place you can’t bend if playing the chords live. It’s a dead giveaway of arranger playing.

Perhaps try making a track for one of the tunes and just seeing how much less Floyd Kramer-ish you can sound if you can fully use your LH on that bender! 🎹😎

Good points Diki, and I am considering making my own backing tracks, but as far as the pitch bending goes, that won't be possible because the bride has requested that I play on the venues acoustic piano.
She sent me piano cover versions of Hindi pop/Bollywood songs, so she has a good idea of what she wants. Most likely, I'll just do solo piano for this event.

Ouch! Indian music on a piano! Can’t say I’ve ever heard that…

Best of luck!

That was my initial thought too, which I conveyed to the bride ( who is a pianist herself) . To my surprise piano covers of Bollywood music is pretty huge on YouTube at least.

Anyways , I know very little about Indian music, but I think the more modern Bollywood music is quite westernized, very different from the traditional/ classical Indian that I had in my mind.

Yeah, modern Bollywood is pretty westernized, but the singing is still very Indian!

There’s some interesting things being done by iPad musicians using an app called GeoShred. Check it out! https://youtu.be/vf727mL186o