Shivaji Park Nagarik Sangh featured two talented young musicians at an evening concert. Both the youngsters performed well and elicited appreciative responses from the full house. Sharvari Nagvekar is a pupil of the senior singer Suhas Vyas. She sang the raga 'Multani'. The bada khyal was set to taal tilwada. Navekar sings in a rounded voice and her voice could make an impact even without the microphone. Her khyal progressed on predictable lines but could have sounded better if she had shown more 'upaj' ang (creativity). Her rendition of natya sangeet was lapped up by the audience. She was supported on the tabla by Pushkar Joshi and on the harmonium by Abhishek Kathe.
The 32-year-old Indrajit Roychoudhury was born and and brought up in the US and he has become a practitioner of Hindustani music which is creditable.
Roychaudhury, as a child, began learning the piano from Catherine Caywood. He learned Western music for four years till the age of 12. His interest in Hindustani music was awakened by listening to his mother Namita Roychaudury who is an exponent of the Rabindra Sangeet. “Rabindra Sangeet is a form of music which was invented by the Nobel laureate poet. He has made ample use of ragas and raginis. I was slowly but definitively attracted towards the magical world of raga music through listening to my mother,” he said.
Roychaudhury would visit Calcutta every year and spend three months. As a child artiste, he performed at the Calcutta School of Music. “It was half Western piano and half the performance was a sitar recital. Noted sitar exponent Subrato Roychaudhury heard him play at this programme and was impressed by the inborn talent which Indrajit possessed. Subrato Roychaudhury accepted Indrajit as a student and he began learning the sitar. “For a while, I tried playing Hindustani ragas on the piano but I gave up. After all, meend (glissando) and gamak (vibrating notes which have micro tones of the preceding as well as succeeding notes) are crucial to Hindustani music and they can not be produced on the piano. Therefore, I decided to switch completely to the sitar,” he said. He did his graduation from the Grand Duke University and from the year 2000 onwards he devoted himself entirely to sitar playing. “I was learning for three months in Calcutta and again when my teacher visited the United States,” he said. He has toured the continent along with his mentor and accompanied him on the sitar at the concerts.
Apart from Subrato Roychaudhury, Indrajit also looks upon past masters like Nikhil Bannerjee, Vilayat Khan and Ravi Shankar as his role models.