The Stories and Songs of Kumar Gandharva
Compositions from His Most Prolific Decade
RSVPs will open Sun, Jul 19 at 7pm.
Musicians
A friend’s forgotten invitation, the name of a railway station, an afternoon spent watching a tree flower, turned almost on the spot into a raag, a poem, a bandish.
Settled in his home on the slopes of a hill in 1960s Dewas, surrounded by the contented countryside of Malwa, bandishes seemed to come to Kumar Gandharva all the time, from everywhere at once. He composed at a pace he himself called a ‘queue system’ too large to hold back.
Scholar and vocalist Srijan Deshpande spends this evening inside that one decade, moving between narration and live singing. He traces the strikingly different sources, the inherited, recovered, invented, and overheard, that found their way through one musician’s voice.
Musicians
Srijan Deshpande
Srijan Deshpande is a Hindustani classical vocalist, writer, scholar and educator whose work bridges tradition and contemporary thought. Trained under the guidance of his father Satyasheel Deshpande, he is deeply influenced by the legacy of Kumar Gandharva and is known for his thoughtful and scholarly interpretations of Khayal music. Alongside performance, he is committed to pedagogy and cultural dialogue through his writing, teaching and curation. Srijan is a fellow of the New India Foundation, and is writing a major biography of Kumar Gandharva with its support. He is a research affiliate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and performs and teaches music in India and the USA.
Gautam Tembhekar
Gautam Tembhekar is a tabla artist from Pune and a disciple of the late Pandit Bhai Gaitonde. He was initiated into music by his grandfather, the distinguished vocalist and guru Pandit Mohanrao Karve. Deeply influenced by the accompaniment style of Pandit Vasantrao Achrekar who was renowned for his long association with Pandit Kumar Gandharva, Gautam’s playing is marked by sensitivity, sonority, and a love for the nuanced expressiveness of Hindustani bandishes.
Bharath Hegde
Bharath Hegde, a harmonium artist from Sirsi in Uttara Kannada, Karnataka, received his initial training in harmonium from Shri Shambhu Bhat, Shri Prakash Hegde, and Pandit Vasanth Kanakapur, studying both solo performance and accompaniment. He currently receives advanced training from Pandit Sudhir Nayak. Over the years, he has performed extensively across India, accompanying several leading Hindustani musicians, including Pandit Vinayak Torvi, Pandit Venkatesh Kumar, Pandit Jayateerth Mevundi among many others. He is also an accomplished solo performer, and was honored with the Shiva Saadhak Award in 2023 in recognition of his contributions to music.
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RSVPs closed. Thank you for your interest.
