Arnab Chakrabarty & Shahbaz Hussain

Aymen Arts is pleased to partner with QalandarArts and the Canadian arts organization, The Raga Fellowship, to bring music lovers in Manchester a unique evening concert. Rarely heard in the North of the UK, the sarod is one of the two best known instruments used in the Hindustani classical music tradition of North India and Pakistan. To a layperson, it sounds akin to a happy hybrid of a slide guitar, a banjo and a piano. Blending with it to create the signature sounds of South Asian classical music is the ubiquitous tabla, but here is the catch - few people know that one of the world's great masters of the tabla is a resident of Greater Manchester. Joining the maestro, Shahbaz Hussain, on the aforementioned fretless sarod, is Arnab Chakrabarty, widely considered a leading light of the Hindustani instrumental tradition.

A typical sarod recital finds the tabla in an accompanying role, and there is great beauty in how a skillful tabla player merges his or her personality with the music of the lead artist as demanded by the occasion. That being said, Chakrabarty and Hussain share a special on-stage chemistry, fueled by their friendship off-stage, which blurs the soloist-accompanist divide, resulting in a truly equal music. Both artists, though reputedly very traditional in their approach, have spent most of their lives in the West, with both having strong ties to northern England. Hussain is a native of Rochdale, while the Toronto-based Chakrabarty, though born in Bombay, spent many years living and teaching in Leeds,

Both musicians combine their passion for this music with rigorous training received under some legendary masters of their art. Shahbaz Hussain studied with the world renowned Ustad Allarakha, and two other luminaries of the tabla, namely, Ustad Faiyaz Khan of Delhi and Ustad Shaukat Hussain Khan of Lahore. Chakrabarty had his early training under the highly respected Pandit Buddhadev Dasgupta and went on to study with Dr. Kalyan Mukherjea and Ustad Irfan Khan.

Through this music, Shahbaz and Arnab connect with masters of the past, the stories of whose near fanatical devotion to their art continues to fire and inspire their own creativity and imagination. Come join us in a celebration of this unique musical partnership and witness creative, improvised raga music at its finest.

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