Pt Swapan Chaudhuri to get Lifetime Achievement Award

Come January 7 and Season 11 of the Behala Classical Festival will kickstart at the grounds of Behala Blind School.

The music festival, which will continue till January 10, will bestow the Lifetime Achievement Award this year to eminent tabla maestro Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri.

A recipient of the Padma Shri Award and Sangeet Natak Academy Award, as well as the American Academy of Artists Award, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri bases his style on the intensive training he had received from his teacher, the late Pandit Santosh Krishna Biswas, an eminent exponent of the Lucknow Gharana.“This year the Lifetime Achievement Award will be given to Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri. Earlier, this honour has been given to Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Begum Parveen Sultana, Pandit Anindya Chattopadhyay and many other eminent musical geniuses. It feels good to leave behind the bad days of Covid and be united again in this event,” said Sandipan Banerjee, secretary, Behala Sanskritik Sammilani.

Noted artistes like Rahul Sharma (santoor), Satyajit Talwalkar (tabla), Uday Bhawalkar (vocals), and Pratap Awad (Pakhwaaz) will perform on the inaugural day of the Behala Classic Festival. On January 8, Bharti Pratap (vocals), Shashank Subramaniam (flute), and Ramanamurthy (Mridangam) will perform. January 9 will witness the performance of Sagniv Abhoyankar (vocals), Mysore Manjunath, Nagaraj (violin), and Somnath Roy (ghatam). On the closing day of the festival i.e. January 10, Purbayan Chatterjee (sitar), Ojas Adhia (tabla), Basant Kabra (sarod), and Bickram Ghosh (tabla) will perform.