Interviews
Nikhil Sardana: What is the International Music & Arts Society? Tell us about its founder. What was the purpose and vision of setting up this organisation? Urmila Devi Kotda Sangani: The International Music & Arts Society(IMAS) is a charitable, not-for-profit organisation founded in 1974 by my mother Rani Vijaya
Interviews
Nikhil Sardana: Please share you background with us. K N Suntook: I am a Bombay person. My family has been here for hundreds of years. We grew up in a very western atmosphere. My grandfather had a huge collection of records and would play the piano and sing Lieder after
Interviews
Nikhil Sardana: Please share your background with us. Dickoo Nowroji: I was born into a musical family in Jamshedpur. My father was a connoisseur who understood the finer points of Western classical music to an unusual degree. We had a huge LP collection, and the best mono system in town
Interviews
Nikhil Sardana: When did you set up the Bombay Chamber Orchestra and what was your inspiration behind this initiative? Jini Dinshaw: The Bombay Chamber Orchestra (BCO) was founded in 1962. On my return from the UK, I discovered that the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and the Bombay Philharmonia were no longer
Features
This year, after the Jaipur Literature Festival, we had the opportunity to speak with Mr Sanjoy Roy, the Managing Director of Teamwork Arts on a variety of topics related to the arts, their impact across the world, especially in India, and get an insight into what we could perhaps do
Interviews
Please share your background with us. My name is Alpesh Chauhan and I am a conductor. My parents were born in East Africa (father in Tanzania and mother in Kenya) of Indian descent (Gujarati). I was born in Birmingham (UK) and grew up there, learning the cello from the age
Meet the Maestro
Nikhil Sardana: Where did you grow up and pursue your music studies? What led you to choosing a career in conducting? Alexander Briger: I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. I started playing the violin at a very young age and became serious about this instrument by the age
Features
Please share your background with us. I am from the Netherlands where I pursued my violin studies. Then I went on to university to study mathematics. I worked in the field of mathematics between 1981 and 1995, but then fully returned to the music world. In between, I have always
Interviews
Please share your background with us. I’ve lived all my life in London and when I was four and my older sister began learning to play, I immediately fell in love with music and the piano. My musical education happened very fortuitously – when I was six my mother took
Interviews
Tell us about pursuing your violin studies. I got to study in some incredible institutions: Royal Academy of Music Junior Department, Royal Academy of Music for Undergraduate studies and the Royal College of Music for my Postgraduate. I met a lot of the colleagues that I work with now during
Interviews
When did you come up with the idea to tour India with the Australian World Orchestra in October 2015? It was Alexander Briger’s idea who first had a discussion about this with Maestro Zubin Mehta and Nick Deutsch, our Principal Oboe for the Australian World Orchestra. What were the
Meet the Maestro
Nikhil Sardana: Could you share your earliest childhood memories related to music? A.R. Rahman: My father was an arranger for various composers and often acted as a versatile assistant to them. Back then, most composers were Carnatic musicians who created the tunes, and my father would arrange the music.