Week of Music of India at UND

Lecture

5 p.m. | Josephine Cambell Recital Hall, UND Hughes Fine Arts Center

Dr. Priyanka Venkatesh

Forging a More Perfect Union: A Journey from Exoticism to Intercultural Synthesis of Indian and Western Music through Works for Violin

Lauded by Latin Grammy Award-winning cellist Antonio Lysy for her “fantastic musical instinct,” violinist Priyanka Venkatesh began her journey on a very different path. Originally a pre-medical student at Stanford University, she found herself drawn irresistibly toward a more artistic life and made the decision to leave her original path behind to pursue her passion, the violin.

Yet her original path was never entirely separate from her life’s purpose. Driven by a desire to heal and connect, Priyanka has found in music a powerful vehicle for fostering empathy and intercultural understanding. Holding a Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) in Violin Performance from UCLA, she embraces her Indian and Western heritage as the foundation of her artistic identity. As a Fulbright Scholar to India, where she studied both Carnatic and Hindustani music intensively, she has dedicated her career to dissolving boundaries between musical traditions through performance, composition, scholarship, and education.

Committed to expanding the possibilities of classical music, Priyanka celebrates the opportunities music creates for meaningful cross-cultural dialogue. Through the South Asian Symphony Foundation, founded by former Indian Ambassador to the United States Ms. Nirupama Rao, she has performed in India with the South Asian Symphony Orchestra. As soloist with the orchestra, she gave the Indian premiere of Svara Yantra, the violin concerto featured in tonight’s performance.

Her ensemble, Divyára, serves as a living expression of her artistic vision. Performing repertoire inspired by musical traditions from around the world, Divyára invites audiences to discover not only what makes these traditions distinct, but also the universal threads that unite them. Priyanka’s own compositions and improvisations similarly explore fluid intersections between Western and Indian music. In 2024, she released her debut album, International Passion, celebrating musical traditions from across the globe.

Her scholarly work reflects the same passion for cultural dialogue. In her doctoral dissertation, Forging a More Perfect Union: A Journey from Exoticism to Intercultural Synthesis of Indian and Western Art Music through Works for Violin, she examines evolving approaches to musical interculturalism. She has presented this research at conferences, including meetings of the Society for Music Theory and the American Musicological Society.

Equally at home in both classical and popular music, Priyanka is also a sought-after performer of Bollywood and Hollywood film music at distinguished weddings, galas, and nonprofit events.

Having experienced firsthand music’s transformative power, Priyanka is deeply committed to music education. She has taught at Stanford University, UCLA, and UC Irvine, while also volunteering with youth music programs. Through her work with the nonprofit organization Musicians for the World, she was named La Madrina (“Godmother”) of Los Violines de San Juan, an organization providing music education to underserved children in Lima, Peru.

Priyanka has received prizes in numerous competitions, including the 2021 International Piazzolla Music Competition. She is deeply grateful to her mentors, including Scott St. John, Haroutune Bedelian, Movses Pogossian, Mysore Manjunath, and Delhi P. Sunderrajan, whose guidance has profoundly shaped her artistic journey.

Workshop

3:30 p.m. | UND Hughes Fine Arts Center, Room 256

Ravindra Deo

Tabla and Rhythm in Hindustani Music

Ravi Deo is a tabla artist, composer, and educator whose work moves fluidly between Hindustani musical traditions, Western art and popular music, and contemporary interdisciplinary collaboration. Rooted in the rich rhythmic language of tabla, his practice explores the possibilities of musical exchange, bringing traditions into dialogue while honoring the distinct histories, aesthetics, and voices from which they emerge.

Across concert music, dance, theater, film, games, multimedia, and installation projects, Deo performs, composes, and collaborates with artists from diverse musical and cultural backgrounds. His work ranges from improvisation and contemporary composition to site-responsive and environmentally engaged projects, exploring the relationship between sound, place, and collective memory. He brings the tabla into dialogue with musicians, artists, and communities across cultures, genres, and generations.

Deo’s artistic practice is grounded in the lineage of his late guru, Pt. Rameshji Kumar, and shaped by the guidance of Professor Abhiman Kaushal and Pt. Swapan Chaudhuri, as well as the influence of the late Dr. Gopal Marathe, Smt. Anjani Ambegaonkar, and Ud. Aashish Khan. His work also includes Indonesian performances with I Nyoman Wenten. He holds degrees in Ethnomusicology from UCLA and Performance and Composition from the California Institute of the Arts, where he received the Dean’s Grant, the Remo Percussion Fellowship, and the Dr. Rajeev Taranath Award for his multidisciplinary intercultural work.

His credits include collaborations with the United Nations, Nickelodeon Television, and international arts initiatives. He has performed with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and Tesserae Baroque, and his projects include Drifting Time, presented at the Port of Los Angeles; Rana Sara Maya, presented at the United Nations Ocean Conference; Kalpataru with Arpana Dance Company and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra; and Rabbinical School Dropouts, released through John Zorn and Tzadik.

Public Dialogue

5 p.m. | Josephine Campbell Recital Hall, UND Hughes Fine Arts Center

Guru Arijit Mahalanabis & Akhil Jobanputra

Sacred Sound in Indian Culture

Arijit Mahalanabis is a Hindustani musician, educator, musicologist, and founder of the Society for Indian Music and Arts (SIMA). His musical work encompasses Dhrupad, Khayal, Thumri, Tappa, and sustained engagement with Carnatic music. He received his principal training from Smt. Shantha Benegal, inheriting through her a rich musical legacy spanning the Dagarbani and Agra traditions of Dhrupad, the Agra and Kunwar Shyam traditions of Khayal, and a wide body of light-classical repertoire. He has also received guidance from Pta. Neela Bhagwat and Pt. Arun Dravid.

Teaching and pedagogy are at the center of Arijit’s work. Through SIMA, which he founded in 2006, he has developed a rigorous, graded curriculum for the study of Hindustani music, integrating rāga, tāla, composition, technique, musical literature, and improvisation. SIMA has since grown into an international community of students and affiliated schools.

Arijit has also devoted significant attention to scholarship and the recovery of historical musical literature. His translation projects include Mārīf-ul Naghmāt, a collection of Dhrupad and Dhamār compositions associated with the Rampur court, and Prof. Ramanlal Mehta’s Agra Gharana: Tradition, Musical Philosophy, and Repertoire. He has served as a visiting artist at the University of Washington, an adjunct professor at The Evergreen State College, and a scholar-in-residence at Brhaddhvani in Chennai.

A former active concert performer and prolific composer writing under the name Sāñjhraṅg, Arijit’s work today is centered on teaching, scholarship, curriculum development, and the cultivation of future generations of musicians.

Akhil Jobanputra is a student, performer, educator, and curator of Indian classical music. He began his musical journey at the age of three, learning from teachers across different gharanas and traditions. Since 2017, he has received intensive training under the tutelage of the highly respected gurus Dr. Pandit Arun Dravid and Pandit Arijit Mahalanabis.

Featured as one of CBC’s “30 Under 30” Canadian classical musicians in 2024, Akhil is a practitioner of Dhrupad, Khayal, and Thumri. His musical practice is deeply informed by exposure to a diverse array of stylistic disciplines, artists, and musical lineages. With a voice that moves across centuries, Akhil’s repertoire encompasses rare and familiar traditional compositions alongside contemporary creations, including his own. He has performed across Canada, the United States, India, and the United Kingdom, with notable appearances at Kitab Khana in India, the Chilliwack Cultural Centre in Canada, and the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music in the United States. Rooted in tradition yet ever curious and exploratory, his music is characterized by rhythmic playfulness, emotive ornamentation, and unhurried, expansive expressions of rāgas and compositions.

As an educator, Akhil is passionate about investing in the future of this music, teaching students from a variety of backgrounds through the Kalāvāṇī Institute. At twelve, Akhil founded the Indian Classical Music Society of Vancouver (ICMSV), through which he has curated initiatives and events aimed at increasing awareness, accessibility, and education around Indian classical music. Through this work, he creates spaces where seasoned listeners and newcomers alike can explore the depth and beauty of Indian classical music in community.

Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra Concert

An evening of music inspired by Indian musical, literary, and spiritual traditions from Puranas to Bollywood.

2:30 p.m. | East Grand Forks High Performing Arts Center
1420 4th Ave NW, East Grand Forks, MN 56721