Hindustani Classical Music and Dance Festival

Swapan Chaudhuri is considered one of the top masters of tabla in the world. He is the Director of Percussion at Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California. He developed his skill through years of accompanying Ali Akbar Khan and other leading musicians of India.

Niharika Mohanty, resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a leading Odissi dancer in the West as a prominent disciple of legendary Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Niharika was raised in Canada, but she took to Odissi dance at the tender age of five. Today, Niharika continues refining her dance under the two torch-bearers of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’s style – Guru Ratikant and Guru Sujata Mohapatra. Niharika also holds an MA in Dance and has received several grants and awards for training, performance, and choreography. Niharika has been honored in 2019 as a Mosaic Silicon Valley Fellow for commitment to artistic excellence and strengthening community through multicultural arts. She relishes working on cross-cultural collaborative projects.

Suhail Yusuf, a musician and academic, grew up in New Delhi. Continuing the family tradition, Suhail draws from a rich musical heritage as an eighth-generation sarangi player.
At the age of seven, Suhail started learning to play the sarangi under the tutelage of his Uncle and his Grandfather, in the ‘Guru-Shishya Parampara’ (the Traditional Indian Schooling method of imparting of knowledge from the Guru “teacher” to the Shishya “student’). Suhail gave his first live performance at the age of 11 and has extensively toured across South Asia, East Asia, the Middle-East, North and South Africa, Europe, the U.K., and the U.S.A.

Suhail is a multifaceted instrumentalist and vocalist and is also a composer and singer/songwriter. His versatility extends to varied genres of music, from Hindustani Classical Music to contemporary Rock Fusion, Jazz Fusion, World Music, Folk Music, and Experimental Music. The British Council, New Delhi, appointed Suhail Cultural Ambassador from India to the U.K. in 2013-2014. Suhail was awarded the M.A. in Music from Wesleyan University (USA) in 2018 and is currently completing a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology in this Music Department.

Rachna Bodas is an accomplished Hindustani Classical Vocalist endowed with a vibrant voice. Rachna was born in a family where music was always around. She displayed a keen interest in music as a child and was encouraged by her father Shri Ravi Shankar Shukla, an accomplished tabla player in Kanpur.

Her musical journey started under the guidance of the late Pt. Kashinath Shankar Bodas in 1992. She was introduced to the basics of gayaki and soulful bhajans from him. Later she learned the depth of Khyal Gayaki and art of performing from eminent vocalist Dr. Veena Sahasrabuddhe.

Rachna holds an academic degree in Music and English. Besides performing, Rachna also has a zeal to teach aspiring students interested in music.

Nilan Chaudhuri is a Bay Area based percussionist, educator, and performer. Initiated into
the tradition of Indian Classical Music at the age of five by his father, Pandit Swapan
Chaudhuri, Nilan has been performing as a tabla soloist and accompanist for nearly two
decades. Prior to beginning his formal training with his father in 2000, Nilan studied tabla
with Brad Van Cleve, Tim Witter, and Uttam Chakraborty, all of whom are senior disciples of his father.

Drawing inspiration from his father’s innovative approach to classical tabla solo, Nilan was
determined from a young age to be a soloist. He presented his first public tabla recital at theage of eleven, at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, in the presence of Maestro AliAkbar Khansahib. It was during these formative years that Nilan was introduced to the world of Tabla accompaniment by Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, providing rhythmic support for his vocal and instrumental classes at the college.

As a teenager, Nilan was inspired by the Jazz-fusion Band ‘Oregon’ a group spearheaded by his cousin, multi-percussionist, Collin Walcott. The band’s music influenced Nilan to broaden his rhythmic studies, and in 2003, he began learning the drum set with Sly Randolph, of Richmond, California. Today, Nilan experiments regularly with bridging the two styles of Indian and American drumming, and plays a hybrid kit that fuses together the tabla and drum set, and incorporates electronic percussion instruments like the Roland HandSonic, and Ableton Push. Since 2007, Nilan has had the incredible opportunity to attend tabla-centric rhythm workshops conducted by Ustad Zakir Hussain. He has also attended South Indian percussion classes taught by ghatam Vidwan Subhash Chandran, kanjira Vidwan Ganesh Kumar, and Jim Santi Owen.

Since his debut performance in concert with his father in Queens, NY, in 2005, Nilan has had the privilege of sharing the stage with some of Hindustani Classical Music’s most celebrated artists, like Ustad Amjad Ali Khansahib, Ustad Shujaat Khan, Pt. Ramesh Misra, Pt. Debashish Bhattacharya, and Alam Khan, at venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Fillmore, The Monterey Pop Festival, The Richmond Folk Festival, Fox Theater, The San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, and The Kennedy Center. His genre-bending collaborations include performances, projects, and recordings with the likes of conductor Michael Morgan and the Fremont Symphony, pop star, Beck, sitarist, Arjun Verma, sarodist, Manik Khan, violinist Raaginder Singh Momi, The Toronto Tabla Ensemble, George Brooks, Dennis Chambers, Miles Schon, and DJ Teeko. In addition to maintaining a rigorous performing schedule, Nilan teaches Tabla throughout the Bay Area as a faculty member at the Ali Akbar College of Music, in San Rafael, and as the Director of Percussion at Chitresh Das Institute, in San Mateo. He also serves as an archivist at the Ali Akbar College of Music, where the construction of a musical archive spanning 40 years of his Father’s work, is underway. It’s his lifelong mission to contribute to the preservation and enrichment of Indian Classical percussion.