KalaSudha

KalaSudha Championing Indian Classical Music, Arts & Dance artists globally. Academy • Concert • Workshop • Festivals • Recordings • Music Releases 🌍✨

KalaSudha is a leading digital experience company, empowering artists, music labels, and businesses. We begin our journey with Indian Music, Dance, and Arts, with a vision to develop innovative products and platforms for niche and global audiences. 🎶✨

17/09/2026

This clip comes from our own archive, filmed last November on a single camera. The instrument is a clay pot. The man playing it is R. N. Prakash.

The ghatam has no membrane, no strings and no way to tune it. What it gives you depends on where the hand lands and how hard. Prakash uses fingers, palms, wrists and the heel of the hand, and draws the lowest notes by pressing the mouth of the pot into his stomach. He began at six years old in Bangalore, under Vidwan K. N. Krishnamurthy, and All India Radio graded him an A-grade artiste. He also plays mridangam and khanjira.

He moved to the UK in his thirties and became a central figure in London's Carnatic scene. He has appeared on BBC, Channel 4 and MTV, worked with Massive Attack, and accompanied Jayanthi Kumaresh, Ganesh and Kumaresh, Jyotsna Srikanth, Pandit Ajay Prasanna and Ustad Shahbaz Hussain.

In his own words, creating music is satisfying work, and teaching students keeps the nuances of classical music alive for the future.

On Saturday, he brings South Indian percussion into a concert built mostly on North Indian and Western music. Pandit Debasis Chakroborty plays Indian slide guitar, Giuliano Modarelli plays guitar, and Dr Sam Evans plays tabla. Two rhythmic traditions from opposite ends of India, sharing one pulse. The first half holds classical raga form, with a twenty-minute alap and jod and compositions in Rupak and Jhaptal. The second half opens into three improvised pieces.

KalaSudha brings Slide & Strum on The Mystic Frets to Norwich, part of Kala Festival 2026.

6:30 PM, Saturday 19 September. St Andrew's Hall, Norwich.

https://kalasudha.com/event/norwich-ragas-slide-strum-on-the-mystic-frets

A Full Day ticket covers this concert and Ustad Akram Khan's tabla solo at the same venue at 12:00 PM.

16/09/2026

Giuliano Modarelli, filmed in Edinburgh last year on a single camera from our archive. We pulled the clip out because of where he will be on Saturday evening.

Giuliano is an Italian guitarist based in London whose playing sits between Indian classical music, jazz and the wider world. A fretted guitar resists raga. The bends, the meend, the long slide into a note: none of it comes easy on six strings and frets, and he has spent his career making the instrument do it. He founded the ensembles Samay and Kefaya, has performed at WOMAD, Latitude and the London Jazz Festival, and has worked alongside Pandit Debasis Chakroborty for years.

KalaSudha is proud to present Slide & Strum on The Mystic Frets this Saturday at St Andrew's Hall. Giuliano shares the stage with Pandit Debasis Chakroborty, a maestro of Indian slide guitar in the Senia-Maihar gharana, with more than thirty years of international performance experience, travelling from Agra. Dr Sam Evans plays tabla. He trained under Pandit Anindo Chatterjee in Kolkata and Ustad Zakir Hussain in America, and holds Australia's first PhD in tabla. RN Prakash brings Carnatic percussion on the ghatam, a clay pot played with the fingers, palms and heel of the hand.

The evening comes in two parts. Classical Foundations first: a twenty-minute raga with alap and jod, then two compositions in Rupak, a seven-beat cycle, and Jhaptal, a ten-beat cycle. Fusion Horizons after the interval: three improvised pieces where the two guitars, the tabla and the ghatam work without a map.

Four musicians, four traditions, one room. This is the kind of evening that happens when artists of this standing agree to sit down together, and we are glad it is happening in Norwich.

6:30 PM, Saturday 19 September. St Andrew's Hall, Norwich. Tickets £25, students £15.

kalasudha.com/event/norwich-ragas-slide-strum-on-the-mystic-frets

A Full Day ticket covers this concert and Ustad Akram Khan's tabla solo at the same venue at 12:00 PM, at one price.

15/09/2026

Five nights across the UK, 18-22 November 2026.

Adnan Khan on sitar. Vinay Desai on santoor. Ustad Akram Khan on tabla, seventh generation of the Ajrada gharana.

Adnan Khan plucks his strings and bends them between notes. Vinay Desai strikes his and cannot bend one, so the santoor answers in runs and shimmer. Two ways of singing a raga on strings, with Ustad Akram Khan playing behind both.

A Hundred Strings opens at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford on 18 November, then 2x London, Manchester, Newcastle and one more city to be announced soon.

Tickets will be available on our website soon.

15/09/2026

This is our own recording from Norwich last year, at the Assembly House. Ustad Akram Khan is accompanying Debasis Chakroborty on slide guitar, and if you watch his hands, you will understand why we asked him back.

KalaSudha is proud to present him this Saturday in a different seat. St Andrew's Hall, a tabla solo, his name on the concert.

Ustad Akram Khan carries the Ajrada gharana into its seventh generation. He learned from his great-grandfather, Ustad Mohammad Shafi Khan, then from Ustad Niazu Khan. Over more than forty years, he has preserved more than fifteen of the gharana's classic kaydas and broadcast them on All India Radio over eight hundred times. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations lists him as a top-grade artist. Ask anyone who follows this instrument, and they will tell you the same thing: he is one of the finest tabla players alive, and no one plays with a parallel command of the gharana repertoire.

A solo leaves a player nowhere to hide. It opens in a slow, meditative rhythm and builds into cascading patterns, and within that arc he places compositions from different eras of his gharana alongside his own improvisation. You hear a tradition and a living musician in the same breath. Satwinder Pal Singh supports him on sarangi.

St Andrew's Hall is the right room for this. A 250-seat afternoon under that roof, close enough to hear the fingers and the drums.

12:00 PM, Saturday 19 September. St Andrew's Hall, Norwich. Doors 11:45 AM.

https://kalasudha.com/event/norwich-ragas-tabla-solo-by-ustad-akram-khan

12/09/2026

Tabla Solo in motion by one of the great Tabla player of our time, Ustad Shahbaz Hussain; our second session is live at the Great Hall, Reading 🔥

12/09/2026

We are live at the Great Hall, University of Reading 🎶

First concert of the month and of the Kala Festival 😍

07/09/2026

This is Satwinder Pal Singh at The Great Hall in Reading, filmed on one camera from our own archive. He walks back onto that stage on Saturday.

He gave his first public performance at five, at the Baba Harivallabh Sangeet Sammelan. His father, Ustad Shaminder Pal Singh, holds an A-grade position at All India Radio. His grandfather was a celebrated folk musician. The sarangi has run through three generations of that house. From there, he went to two of the greatest players the instrument has known, Padma Vibhushan Pandit Ram Narayan Ji and Padma Bhushan Ustad Sabri Khan Saheb.

A sarangi has no frets and no forgiveness. The player finds every note with the side of a fingernail against the string. It takes decades before it sounds like a voice. When it does, nothing else in Indian music sounds like it.

That someone carrying this much tradition lives and plays here in the UK is what makes an afternoon like this possible. It means Reading gets the music at home, in a 340-seat hall, close enough to see the bow move.

Satwinder opens Kala Festival for us on Saturday. First day, first concert, first session. He leads the first half, with Ustad Shahbaz Hussain on tabla, before the two of them trade places after the interval.

Please come. 12 PM, Saturday 12 September, The Great Hall, University of Reading, London Road Campus. Doors open at 11:30 AM. Tickets £27, students £15.

https://kalasudha.com/event/reading-raga-resonance-bow-beat-and-breath

05/09/2026

A glimpse of Ustad Akram Khan's tabla solo in Drut Teentaal, recorded live at The Great Hall, University of Reading, during Kala Festival 2025, supported by Satwinder Pal Singh on Sarangi.

The Chakradar sequence opens with a composition by the legendary Ustad Zakir Hussain, followed by compositions from the Ajrada Gharana tradition.

Full performance releases soon on YouTube. Don't miss it

01/09/2026

This clip sat in our archive on a single camera, unedited. We are sharing it because of who is in it and where he will be on Saturday.

Ustad Shahbaz Hussain trained with his father, then with Ustad Faiyaz Khan of the Delhi gharana, Ustad Shaukat Hussain Khan of the Punjab gharana, and Ustad Allah Rakha. Three lineages in one pair of hands. He has played the Smithsonian, Lincoln Centre and the Royal Albert Hall, and accompanied Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia and Ghulam Ali.

On Saturday 12 September, he opens Kala Festival in Reading with Satwinder Pal Singh on sarangi. They asked for a structure that gives both instruments equal weight, so the concert runs as two sessions. Satwinder Bhai leads the first with the tabla supporting. Shahbaz Hussain leads the second with the sarangi framing his solo. Melody and rhythm trade places in front of you.

Our thanks to Shahbaz Ji for taking this on and shaping it with us.

If you live in or near Reading, this is a rare afternoon to have on your doorstep. The Great Hall, University of Reading, London Road Campus.

Doors open at 11:30 AM, music at 12:00. Tickets £27, students £15.

https://kalasudha.com/event/reading-raga-resonance-bow-beat-and-breath

31/08/2026

Dr Sam Evans plays four concerts with us this September, and it is his first time with KalaSudha.

He trained for ten years under Pandit Anindo Chatterjee in Kolkata and with Ustad Zakir Hussain in America. He records across Australia, writes for film and documentary, and appears on a BBC album beside Ravi Shankar, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Nitin Sawhney. He directed the Monash University World Music Orchestra for twelve years and founded the Melbourne Tabla School. He is the only Australian with a PhD in tabla.

- Reading, Saturday 12 September, The Great Hall, 6:00 PM
- Bristol, Sunday 13 September, Trinity Centre, 6:30 PM
- Norwich, Saturday 19 September, St Andrew's Hall, 6:30 PM
- Cambridge, Sunday 20 September, Cambridge Junction, 6:30 PM

Tickets and full programme: https://kalasudha.com/artist/sam-evans

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