Aditya Kalyanpur, tabla
Biographies
Pandit Shubhendra Rao is an internationally acclaimed performer, composer, cultural entrepreneur and music educator. His relentless service in promoting Indian music has made him a highly respected figure in the field of music and education across the world. A protégé of Bharat Ratna Pandit Ravi Shankar, Shubhendra Rao has established himself not only as a master of his instrument but also as a thinking musician, constantly endeavouring to carry his instrument beyond conventional boundaries and a musical bridge to many cultures. Critics and connoisseurs hail him as a worthy successor to his Guru’s tradition. Internationally, he has performed at major music festivals and prestigious concert halls including The Kennedy Center, Sydney Opera House, Salzburg International Music festival, National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, National Arts Festival in South Africa, BRICS Summit in China, and Theatre de le Ville in Paris.
In India, Shubhendra Rao has performed at major music festivals in India including Doverlane Music Conference, ITC Sangeet Sammelan, Baba Harvallabh Sangeet Mahasabha, Shankarlal Festival, Gunidas Sammelan, Sankat Mochan Sammarroh, Kashi Utsav, Swami Haridas Sammellan. Leading universities invite him as a guest teacher to give lecture-demonstrations about Indian music. His international tours have taken him to North and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, most countries in Europe, and many Asian countries. In November 2007, he was awarded the Youth Icon for Classical Music by the popular Zee Television Network. In 2014, the Arts and Culture Society awarded him the Delhi Ratna award. In 2018, he was awarded the PhD Art and Culture Samman by the PHD Chamber of Commerce. In September 2018, he was also awarded the first Atal Behari Vajpayee National Award for his contribution to art and culture. In February 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Art Karat Award for Excellence for his contribution in the field of arts.
A child prodigy who started playing sitar at the age of three, he grew up in a musical family. His mother Nagarathna is a Saraswati Veena player. His father, N.R.Rama Rao, a disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar himself, was his first teacher. Shubhendra had his first lesson from the Bharat Ratna Ravi Shankar at the age of eight. At the age of 18, he moved to Delhi, living with and learning from his Guru in the traditional Guru-Shishya parampara. As a budding artist, he was the recipient of Youth State scholarship for music, Karnataka in 1975, and received a National scholarship for music from the Ministry of Culture in 1977. An A- Grade artist of All India Radio for over twenty five years, Shubhendra Rao is a regular performer on radio and national television. As a composer, Shubhendra Rao distinguishes himself to push to boundaries of classical music and creating music for artists across cultures. He has composed for and worked with Dutch cellist Saskia Rao-de Haas, American jazz guitarist Freddie Bryant, Iranian musicians, Japanese legendary singer Ryoko Moriyama, Chinese pipa maestro Gao Hong, the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra, and the Chinese National Orchestra amongst others. His composition When Gods Meet was commissioned by Padma Vibhushan Dr Sonal Mansingh for her dance production, and The New York Times described his composition Yathra as "movingly meditative".
Saskia Rao-de Haas is a world-renowned virtuoso cellist, composer, cultural entrepreneur and educator from the Netherlands. She was trained as a Western cellist from a young age, but changed direction when she came in touch with Indian music in 1993. She is known as a master performer in Indian classical music and hailed as the creator of a new instrument: the Indian cello. Flute Maestro Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia speaks of his disciple Saskia as “someone who has been taught by God,” saying, “everybody should listen to her music”. Her compositions with her Sitarist husband Pandit Shubhendra Rao are well known all over the world. Critics and audiences alike have praised her for artistic depth and technical virtuosity.
Saskia has performed in many of the most prestigious concert halls across the world, including the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington DC, Musee Guimet in Paris, and the New Directions Cello festival. She is the first non-Indian artist to have performed as a soloist at the prestigious Doverlane Music conference in Kolkata. As a composer, her bridging of the Western and Indian classical music traditions has been highly successful. Along with Pt Shubhendra Rao, she has composed music for world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Dutch prime minister.
She co- founded the Shubhendra and Saskia Rao foundation to promote the joy and benefits that Indian classical music can bring to children. She created the first complete music curriculum for Indian music for young children based on six storybooks. Over 20,000 children have already benefitted from the ‘Sangeet4All’ music curriculum. Saskia's books help children to experience the importance of having music in their lives through the transformative power of the Indian classical music traditions. Teacher handbooks, songs, instruments, workshops, a teacher community and over 400 lesson plans accompany the storybooks to ensure proper implementation of the curriculum. Saskia lives in New Delhi with her husband and their 13-year-old son Ishaan, who is a gifted pianist.
With his trademark blend of technical brilliance, creative improvisations and high-octane showpersonship, Aditya Kalyanpur's award-winning tabla virtuoso performances instantly connect with and captivate audiences worldwide. He was a child prodigy who could replicate intricate rhythmic patterns on his first tabla at age three, and trained with none other than the late Ustad Allah Rakha and later, his son, Ustad Zakir Hussain.
Aditya’s performances reflect his versatility and keenness to break through conventional borders. He has, uniquely, gone on to acquire in-depth knowledge across different gharanas and schools of playing, and is in his element when adapting masterfully to any musical context, be it complementing a sitar or jazz guitar or collaborating with artists across genres, from jazz to pop, rap to rock. His Indian fans still remember him in the ‘Wah Taj!’ TV commercial (1990), as the talented youngster cherrypicked by Ustad Allah Rakha Khan for his cheeky ability to keep pace while playing alongside Ustad Zakir Hussain.