Sikkil Gurucharan & Shujaat Khan in concert: A Jugalbandi SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 2017 • 8PM Pre-Performance Talk: 7PM SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2017 • 2PM Pre-Performance Talk: 1PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis India on the Artist’s Eye Festival is curated by Professor Archana Venkatesan, Chair, Department of Religious Studies and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature in partnership with The Robert and Margit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis. Pre-Performance Talk Speaker: Davesh Soneji Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. There will be no intermission. Program is approximately 110 minutes in length.
Jugalbandi, a term that translates as “entwined twins,” invites a musical dialog between two solo performers. Today’s performance showcases India’s two great classical music systems: the Carnatic and Hindustani traditions, represented by two legendary Indian musicians: the vocalist, Sikkil Gurucharan and the sitarist, Shujaat Khan. Exploring melodic modes (raga), lyric (sahitya), and rhythm (tala), through collaboration and improvisation, the artists reveal both what is distinctive and complementary in Carnatic and Hindustani music. Much of the concert will be improvised, including choices of ragas and lyrics. During the first half of the concert, Sikkil Gurucharan and Shujaat Khan will each present a musical piece in a mode distinctive to their tradition. In the second half, they will come together to showcase virtuosic improvisation. This jugalbandi will conclude with a rousing percussion solo, featuring the mridangam and the tabla. Shujaat Khan will be accompanied on stage by Abhiman Kaushal on the tabla. Sikkil Gurucharan will be accompanied by Anuradha Sridhar on the violin and Sumesh Narayanan on the mridangam. All five artists will participate in the improvisational jugalbandi. Sikkil Gurucharan and Shujaat Khan will announce the raga, tala and the composition prior to each section of their concert. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones, watch alarms and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.
BIOGRAPHIES SIKKIL C. GURUCHARAN Sikkil C. Gurucharan is a leading musician and a youth ambassador for Carnatic music. A prime time artist during the Chennai music season and a recipient of numerous awards including the prestigious Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar award and Tchaikovsky Award for the best musician of the year among many, Gurucharan has not only made a mark in the traditional concert paddhati style but also worked to broaden audience appeal by creating collaborative projects with world renowned musicians while retaining the spirit of the art form. In 2015, Gurucharan received a Nehru-Fulbright Excellence Award, and was in residence at UC Davis between January and April 2015. The album Miles from India, a collaborative effort, was nominated for the Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the 51st Grammy Awards. The magazine India Today featured him among 35 Game Changers under the age of 35 in India. SHUJAAT KHAN Shujaat Husain Khan is one of the greatest North Indian classical musicians of his generation. He belongs to the Imdad Khan gharana of the sitar and his style of playing sitar, known as the gayaki ang, is imitative of the subtleties of the human voice. Khan’s musical pedigree extends seven generations. He is the son and disciple of the great sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan, and his grandfather Ustad Inayat Khan, his great-grandfather Ustad Imdad Khan and his great-great-grandfather Ustad Sahebdad Khan, were all leading artists of their respective generations. Khan has performed at all the prestigious music festivals in India and has performed throughout Asia, Africa, North America and Europe. Alongside his many notable performances, Khan has been a regularly featured artist at prestigious concert halls including Royal Albert Hall in London, Royce Hall in Los Angeles and Congress Hall in Berlin. ANURADHA SRIDHAR VIOLIN Anuradha Sridhar is the daughter and disciple of the violin maestro Lalgudi Srimathi Brahmanandam, the reputed sister and violin duo partner of violin virtuoso Lalgudi G. Jayaraman. Groomed in a milieu that traces its roots back to the most significant Carnatic composer of all time, Saint Thyagaraja, the strains of music have been handed down in Sridhar’s family like a precious heirloom, from generation to generation. Her grandfather, Lalgudi Gopala Iyer, was an innovative teacher and a versatile musician. Her brother Shriram Brahmanandam is a
versatile mridangam artist. Among the South Indian classical music aficionados of the San Francisco Bay Area, Sridhar is synonymous with purity, rigor and refinement. As a tireless teacher, performer and ambassador for Carnatic music, Sridhar envisioned her music school, Trinity Center for Music, a few months after she moved to the Bay Area in 1989. SUMESH NARAYANAN MRIDANGAM Sumesh Narayanan hails from a traditional music family and is the great-grandson of Maddalam Venkichan Swamy. Narayanan has been under the tutelage of mridangam maestro Kalaimamani Sri Thiruvaarur Bakthavathsalam for more than 16 years and has acquired the nuances of the traditional gurukulam approach of learning. He has accompanied musical luminaries of Indian classical music, such as Smt. Geetha Rajashekar, Sri Sikkil Gurucharan, Sri O S Thiagarajan and Sri Abhishek Raghuram. He also accompanied Pandit Ronu Majumdar and Vidushi Bombay Jayashri Ramnath on their world tour of their jugalbandi venture—Windsong. Narayanan has also collaborated with a number of contemporary musicians in many world music ventures, and has been featured in Open and Sruthi, India’s premier magazines on music. ABHIMAN KAUSHAL TABLA Abhiman Kaushal is an outstanding tabla artist who is much sought after for his sensitive accompaniment and intense solo playing. He represents the Farukkabad and Lucknow styles of tabla. Having been initiated into the art by his father R. B. Kaushal, who was a disciple of the legendary Ustad Amir Hussain Khan, Kaushal later continued his training under the famous Ustad Sheikh Dawood of Hyderabad, India, and the Ustad’s senior most disciple, Pandit B. Nandkumar. Kaushal has accompanied most of the leading musicians, singers and dancers of North Indian classical music. He has toured around the world performing in prestigious venues. He has numerous recordings and world music collaborations. He has recorded a soundtrack for National Geographic’s Man Eaters of North India, for the film Zoolander and has performed for MTV’s Aerosmith icon show in front of a live audience. Recently he was the solo featured musician for the acclaimed electronic dance drama Ramayana 2k3 which won rave reviews in Los Angeles and New York City. Kaushal is currently on faculty at UCLA and UCR as Director of the North Indian Classical Music ensembles.
India in the Artist’s Eye