THIS WILL BE THE INAUGURAL CONCERT IN CHHANDAYAN'S NEW SPACE IN NEW YORK CITY.
Come celebrate the opening of the new Chhandayan Center for Indian Music with a performance by our founder Samir Chatterjee.
The concert will be followed by an exclusive lunch at the venue for Donors contributing towards the sustenance of the space.
The performance will also be streamed live.
Samir Chatterjee
Samir Chatterjee is a virtuoso Tabla player. He travels widely across the world throughout the year performing in numerous festivals as a soloist or with other outstanding musicians from both Indian and non-Indian musical traditions. Samir performed at the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway. He also performed at the UN General Assembly. His compositions are widely acclaimed as well as his writings. Samir is a firm believer in the transforming effect of music on the society and all aspects of his work reflects this conviction.
Chatterjee began his studies early with Bankim Ghosh, Balaram Mukherjee, Rathin Dhar and Md. Salim. His later formation as a musician occurred under the guidance of Amalesh Chatterjee and Shyamal Bose. All of Samir's teachers have been from the Farrukhabad Gharana of Tabla-playing, which he now represents.
Samir can be heard on numerous recordings featuring as soloist, accompanying many of India's greatest musicians and in collaboration with western musicians of outstanding caliber. In concert Samir has accompanied many of India's greatest musicians including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Jasraj, Nikhil Banerjee, V.G. Jog, Shivkumar Sharma, Hariprasad Chaurasia, M. S. Gopalakrishnan, Amjad Ali Khan, Salamat Ali Khan, Lakshmi Shankar, L. Subramanium, U Srinivas, Shujaat Khan, Shahid Parvez, Ajoy Chakraborty, Rashid Khan, Kaushiki Chakraborty, to name only a few.
Samir Chatterjee has been a catalyst in the fusion of Indian and Non-Indian music, in his own creations and others as well. He has performed with Pauline Oliveros, William Parker, Branford Marsalis, Ravi Coltrane, Joshua Bell, David Liebman, Ned Rothenberg, Mark Dresser, Dance Theater of Harlem, Boston Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, and other jazz, classical and Avant guard musicians and ensembles. He also collaborates with Sufi-Rock singer Salman Ahmad of Junoon from Pakistan. He is the composer and director of Tablaphilia, Indo-Flame, Chhand-Anand, RabiThakur, Meghadootam, and Dawn to Dusk and Beyond. He performs with Sanjay Mishra on his CD "Blue Incantation" featuring Jerry Garcia as guest artist.
Chatterjee has been teaching for the last 50 years. Many of his students are established performers. He is the founding president of Chhandayan. He has authored books titled A Study of Tabla, Music of India and Those Forty Days. He has taught at the Manhattan School of Music, Univ. of Pittsburgh, New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, Yale University, NYU, among many other major institutions in the USA, Europe and India. He has master's degrees in English and History.
Samir made significant contributions towards the musical revival of Afghanistan since 2008. He has received several awards including Sunshine Caribbean Award in 2016, Jadu Bhatta Award from Salt Lake Music Conference, Acharya Varistha Award from Pandit Jasraj Institute, Taal Mani Award from Council of Indian Classical Music, Delhi in 2018, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from SMIPAC Trust, Delhi in 2018.
Rohan Misra
Rohan Misra is a tenth-generation sarangi artist, continuing a rare and respected family tradition of Indian classical music. He began learning the sarangi at the age of six from his father and Guru, the legendary Pandit Ramesh Misra. Under his guidance, Rohan inherited a rich musical legacy shaped by nine generations before him.
He now continues his training under the guidance of Sitar maestro Pandit Kushal Das, whose mentorship plays an important role in shaping and deepening his musical growth. While strongly rooted in classical music, Rohan also explores other genres and cross-cultural collaborations, bringing new sounds and ideas to the sarangi, an instrument often described as having “a hundred colors.”
Rohan has performed at Carnegie Hall, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Smithsonian Institution. He has shared the stage with renowned artists such as Pandit Birju Maharaj, Srimati Kumudini Lakhia, Pandit Swapan Chaudhury, Pandit Rajendra Gangani, Ustad Ma Zila Khan, Pandit Samar Saha, and Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, among others.
Through his music, Rohan Misra honors tradition while continuing to grow and share the voice of the sarangi with audiences from many backgrounds.