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March 20, 2020
Cancelled due to COVID-19
Tickets can be purchased online at FGCU.EDU/CONCERTS
and are $10 for the general public or $7 for students.
Two ancient styles of Indian classical music, Hindustani and Carnatic, are
explored together with contemporary and personal influence. Arun
Ramamurthy is among the leading classical and crossover violinists from
India, performing in both Carnatic and Hindustani traditions, as well as
crossgenre creative projects. Jay Gandhi is a prominent solo performer and
teacher of Hindustani classical flute. As a multifaceted artist, he is a founding
member of the Brooklyn Raga Massive, a musicians collective. Nitin Mitta is one
of the most sought-after tabla players of his generation who has performed
worldwide with some of India’s most celebrated Indian classical musicians.
Arun Ramamurthy is a versatile violinist, composer, educator and organizer based in NYC. A disciple of the celebrated Carnatic violinist brothers, Dr. Mysore Manjunath & Sri Mysore Nagaraj (whom we have hosted in Fort Myers), Arun has become one of the country’s leading Indian Classical and crossover musicians. He has carved a niche for himself as a multifaceted artist, performing internationally in both traditional Carnatic and Hindustani settings as well as cross genre creative projects. Arun has been fortunate to perform with artists such as Dr. Balamurali Krishna, Sudha Ragunathan, T.N. Seshagopalan, Anindo Chatterjee, Mashkoor Ali Khan, Amir ElSaffar, Marc Cary, Awa Sangho among others. Arun is a co-founder and Artistic Director of Brooklyn Raga Massive. He created the concert series Carnatic Sundays at Cornelia Street Café, an iconic jazz venue in New York’s West Village. As an educator, Arun teaches students ranging from beginners to professional musicians in Indian music performance, technique and theory. He has taught workshops on Indian classical music at music schools, universities, conservatories and summer music programs.
Nitin Mitta is one of the most accomplished and distinctive tabla players of his generation, with a reputation for technical virtuosity, spontaneity, clarity of tone, and sensitivity to melodic nuances.
Apart from being a dynamic soloist, he is a highly sought after accompanist who has performed with some of India’s most celebrated Hindustani classical musicians, including Pandit Jasraj, Dr. Prabha Atre, Pandits Rajan and Sajan Mishra, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and Ustad Shahid Parvez, as well as Carnatic musicians, such as Lalgudi G.J.R Krishnan and Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi.
Nitin has also made a mark as a versatile collaborator, joining forces with 2010 Grammy Nominee Pianist Vijay Iyer and electric guitarist R. Prasanna to produce a studio album titled Tirtha that blends elements of contemporary jazz with the North and South Indian traditional ragas and compositions. Another collaboration with R. Prasanna can be heard on the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning documentary Smile Pinky. He has also performed and toured with singer and Juno Award nominee Kiran Ahluwalia.
Born in Hyderabad in 1975, Nitin received his early training in Hyderabad from Pandit G. Satyanarayana. Blessed with raw talent, he gave his first solo tabla performance at the age of ten. During his studies he won first prize in the All India Competition held in Calcutta.
To expand his repertoire of tabla compositions, he sought the guidance of Pandit Arvind Mulgaonkar of Mumbai. Under Mulgaonkarji’s tutelage, Nitin not only broadened his tabla vocabulary, but sharpened his understanding of how to bring the material to life in performances through interpretation, improvisation and respect for the dynamics between instrumentalist and rhythmic accompanist. Both of Nitin’s gurus are disciples of the late Ustad Amir Hussain Khan Saheb, legendary doyen of the Farukhabad Gharana.
After moving to the United States in 2002, Nitin received a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on Arts. He was a member of the faculty at the Learn Quest Academy of Music in Waltham, MA. He has performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Weill recital Hall/Carnegie Hall, the UCLA Royce Hall, the Indian consulate in New York, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C, the Music Academy in Chennai, and the Habitat Centre in New Delhi.
Jai Gandhi a multifaceted artist, Jay's music is at once reflective of his devotion to his Guru, the inimitable legend of the bansuri, Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, as well as a diverse range of other musical influences. Jay’s initial training in Hindustani music was under Smt. Kum Kum Sanyal (vocal) and later in bansuri under Pt. Ronu Majumdar and Pt. Raghunath Seth. Inspired to gain deeper knowledge of both the gayaki ang (vocal style) as well as the tantrakari ang (stringed instrument style), Jay has also taken valuable guidance from Pt Vidyadhar Vyas (vocal) and Pt. Nayan Ghosh (sitar, tabla). In 2006, he was blessed to have been accepted as a disciple of Padma Vibhushan Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, and has since had the honor of accompanying his Guru on stage for multiple concert tours.
From his formative years, Jay’s musical inclinations were not limited to that of the Indian sub-continent and he was also strongly drawn to the music of the African diaspora and American Jazz in particular. With the desire to bring the sound and versatility of the bansuri into the jazz idiom in a meaningful way, he formally studied Jazz Performance at Oberlin College/Conservatory of Music (Ohio) and trained under such Jazz luminaries as Gary Bartz and the late Marcus Belgrave. Today, his journey into this world continues to evolve in new and promising ways, and in more recent times he has had the fortune of performing with such greats as Ravi Coltrane, Reggie Workman, Jeff “Tain” Watts, as well as of sharing the stage with one of the great voices of the tenor saxophone, Pharoah Sanders himself.
A recipient of the prestigious AIIS Performing Arts Fellowship, Jay maintains a busy schedule performing for audiences across the globe. He currently is based out of New York City, where he is very active as both a teacher and performer and also as a founding member of Brooklyn Raga Massive, a prominent musicians collective.
