University of South Carolina’s Southern Exposure New Music Series presents Music from India: Kartik Seshadri and Abhijit Banerjee
In “Music from India,” sitar virtuoso Pandit Kartik Seshadri makes a rare second appearance on the Southern Exposure stage, 10 years after his first Columbia performance brought down the house. A pupil of the great Ravi Shankar, Seshadri is one of Indian classical music’s brightest stars. Seshadri first attracted widespread attention when he began performing full-length solos at the age of 6 in India. He is now hailed as an “amazingly accomplished” musical powerhouse noted for his music’s “expressive beauty, rich tonal sensibility, and rhythmic intricacy,” (Washington Post). He has toured and collaborated with Shankar and composer Philip Glass, among others, and has been featured at venues around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia, the Brighton Festival in U.K., the Ravinia Festival, and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. A leading educator and composer, Seshadri heads the University of California – San Diego’s Indian Classical Music program, one of the largest in the U.S.
Seshadri will be joined by the extraordinary Abhijit Banerjee, one of India’s top tabla players and one of the most sought-after artists in Indian classical music. Considered one of the leading students of his guru, the late Pandit Gyan Prakash Gosh, Banerjee has accompanied nearly all Indian classical music’s biggest stars, and toured extensively throughout the USA, Canada, U.K., Europe, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, as well as performing in all of the major classical music festivals in India. Banerjee has also scored music for TV serials, documentaries, and dramatic films, and founded the Dhwani Academy of Percussion in Los Angeles.
This Southern Exposure concert will also feature work by two local artists who traveled and worked in India: painter Fairoozan Abdalla and photographer Edward Shmunes.
Concert
Friday, November 14, 7:30 p.m.
USC School of Music Recital Hall
Free (arrive early for this popular series as seats fill to capacity)
Master Class with Kartik Seshadri
Friday, November 14, 2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
School of Music room 006
Free and open to the public