Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Keyboard Sathya

Saturday, September 27, 2014 at 8:00pm
Crowell Concert Hall

$18 general public; $15 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Click here to view photos from this event.

“One of the greatest and most expressive slide players in the world.”
—Acoustic Guitar Magazine

Grammy Award–winner Padmashree Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt mesmerizes audiences with his pristine, delicate yet fiery music on the Mohan Veena, a stringed instrument which is a modified archtop guitar, held in the lap like a slide guitar. A disciple of Pt. Ravi Shankar, Pt. V. M. Bhatt belongs to an elite body of musicians which traces its origin to the Moughal emperor Akbar's court musician Tansen and his guru, the Hindu Mystic Swami Haridas. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt has attracted international attention by his successful incorporation of the western Hawaiian guitar into Indian classical music,  assimilating sitar, sarod, and veena techniques. With blinding speed and faultless legato, some outstanding features of Pt. V. M. Bhatt's baaj (style) are his natural ability to play the Tantrakari Ang (instrumental style) and incorporate the Gayaki Ang (vocal style) on Mohan Veena.

A Meeting by the River, Pt. V. M. Bhatt's improvised collaborative album with Ry Cooder, won the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 1994.  Pt. V. M. Bhatt's has also collaborated with Taj Mahal, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, and Edgar Meyer, and performed at Eric Clapton’s 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival.

Nineteen-year-old keyboardist Yukal Bharathi K. Sathyanarayanan has released 24 albums and has performed more than 1,000 concerts since he was six years old. He was among the youngest to have passed the Grade 8 keyboard examinations conducted by Trinity College in London. K. Sathyanarayanan currently studies with Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna and Kum. A. Kanyakumari, and previously studied with Shri Mandolin U. Shrinivas.

Sathya performed with Sri. B. Kannan for Yanni in April 2014 in Chennai in April, 2014, where he is studying music at D. G. Vaishnav College, Arumbakkam. Sathya has also collaborated with Sri. Ravikiran, Sri. Rajesh Vaidhya, Sri. Abhishek Raghuram, Sri. Malladi Brothers, Kum. A. Kanyakumari, Sri. Embar Kannan, and Sri. Paul Jacob.

At Wesleyan, the U.S. debut of this duo will be accompanied by Kamalakiran Vinjamuri (violin), Vijay Ganesh (mridangam), Sowmiya J Narayanan (ghatam), Nittin Mitta (tabla), and Krishnababu (thalam).

Co-sponsored by the Raga Club of Connecticut.

Part of the 38th annual Navaratri Festival.