Meet Soumik Datta/ British-Indian Sarod player & composer

Soumik Datta has toured internationally, performed with international biggies like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Bill Bailey, Nitin Sawhney, Anoushka Shankar, Talvin Singh, Joss Stone and our very own Shankar Mahadevan.
His sarod adorns the theme melodies of film soundtracks and albums by Nitin Sawhney and Jocelyn Pook. The British Indian composer and virtuoso Sarod player has been dubbed a British sarod maestro for bringing the ancient instrument into a global arena.Last year saw him as both a soloist, as he braved the world’s first contemporary sarod concerto and as a composer as he rescored late filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s 1960s epic Goopy Gayne Bagha Gyne for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. An avid fan of 90s dance music, Soumik grew up in Kolkata, Mumbai and London. It wasn’t till the age of 14 that he chanced upon his grandmother’s old sarod. This unlikely encounter set him upon a life-changing path. Soumik was trained by the sarod legend Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta while completing his masters in composition at a music institute in London. Soumik first made his mark with his debut record Fretless. While Soumik continued to present classical concerts, he began expanding and collaborating on new forms. His latest album Anant is a tribute to Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel prize centenary. For this project, poet and Bollywood lyricist Javed Akhtar has translated Tagore songs from Bengali into Hindi. The translated songs have retained the original tune and meter in the tradition of Bollywood music composers Pankaj Mallick and KL Saigal who opened up Bengali Rabindrasangeet to a larger, pan-Indian audience.
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WATCH: MERU Concert Live - Scintillating Soumik Datta and Vijay Ghate - Raga Pilu