3-day dance, music festival opens today

The festival will open with recital by Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, the creator of the Mohan Veena and winner of the Grammy Award. He has mesmerised the world with his pure, delicate yet fiery music and rechristened the guitar  Mohan Veena, establishing it in the mainstream of Indian classical music.

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Being the foremost disciple of Pt Ravi Shankar, Bhatt has attracted international attention by his successful Indianisation of the Western Hawaiian guitar with perfect assimilation of sitar, sarod and veena techniques by giving it an evolutionary design and shape and by adding 14 more strings. The festival will also feature Shruti Shidolkar, noted exponent of the Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana of Hindustani classical music. Trained by her father and Guru, Pt Wamanrao Sadolikar, she also had the good fortune of learning from Ustad Gullubhaiji Jasdanwalla and Ustad Azizuddin Khansaheb.

On the last day of the festival, Shobha Koser will bring on stage a kathak performance, her dance evolving with each presentation. Launching herself as a full-fledged performer at the age of 15, Shobha has studied in minute detail practical and theoretical aspects of kathak, and has learnt intricacies of the Jaipur Gharana of kathak from Guru Kanhiya Lal and Guru Kundan Lal Gangani, both worthy disciples of Nrityacharya late Guru Narayan Prasad.
The festival is on from August 21 to 23 at 6.30 pm at Tagore Theatre, Sector 18, Chandigarh.