Paramparik: Hidayat Khan & Arshadali Khan with Pt. Subhen Chatterjee

Hidayat Khan
Hidayat Khan is a world-renowned musician, maverick sitar player and vocalist. He belongs to a heritage that traces back seven generations toward the most treasured lineage of Indian classical music. Khan is the son of the legendary Ustad Vilayat Khan, globally acclaimed as the greatest of all sitarists.

He harbors a rare, creative brilliance that effortlessly takes him across all genres and nuances of music and can seamlessly transition from the very classical to the very colloquial, from playing the intricate meands (slides) of the Etawa/VilayatkhaniGharana to performing with the Rolling Stones.

He has been fortunate to have performed at The Black Ball Charity in NYC with Alicia Keys and has collaborated with such illustrious musical names as Ndugu Chancler, Ronnie Woods, Usher, Zakir Hussain, Pete Townshend, Will.I.Am, Jay Z and Darryl Jones.

Arshad Ali Khan
Arshad Ali is one of the few prodigies to live up to their initial promise. At the age of nine, he was “the biggest sensation of Sawai Gandharva Sammelan” where he performed by special invitation from Bharat-Ratna Pandit Bhimsen Joshi on the occasion of his 75th birthday celebrations.

Descended from the lineage of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan and Ustad Abul Wahid Khan, the founders of Kirana Gharana, Arshad is considered to be among its leading torch bearers. His style, while strikingly original in its creative exposition of a raag, is steeped in a traditional mould.

Arshad has performed extensively in India and abroad, and has received many awards, including the prestigious Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar in 2013.

Pandit Subhen Chatterjee
Subhen Chatterjee belongs to the Lucknow gharana and has studied under the tabla maestro Pandit Swapan Chowdhury. He has also learnt from masters from other gharanas and incorporated the intricacies and beauty of these gharanas into his playing.

Over the course of his stellar career, he has performed with many illustrious musicians such as the late Padma Vibhushan Girija Devi, Padma Bhushan Budhaditya Mukherjee to name a couple.

Subhen has founded the fusion band Karma, and is a recipient of many awards, including the Sangeet Samaan Award from West Bengal State Government in 2021.

Jonathan Kay
Jonathan is a trained jazz saxophonist from Toronto, Canada. In search of non-western ways of musical knowing, he moved to Kolkata and Santiniketan for 10 years to learn in the guru-shishya paramparic tradition with vocalist Pandit Shantanu Bhattacharyya, and esraj player Abir Singh Khangura.

He is the first to render the full form of vocal raga music (vilambit khayal) on the shrutiphone, a self-customized saxophone to play in raga temperament (tuning). He also is among the few performing boro esraj players, playing in the tantra-kari style in the lineage of Ranadhir Roy.

Based on the integration of his experiences in the jazz and Raga music traditions, he is cultivating a transcultural approach to experimental improvisation with his bands Monsoon, Kayos Theory and The Coltrane Sutras.