The music on this DVD is the first half of a three and a half hour performance recorded in Melbourne, Australia in 2002. It has been entirely recorded and produced by northindianmusic.com. in conjunction with the artists themselves and the Melbourne based, multi-media company Media Design .

This concert features a complete performance of the popular late evening raga, Bageshri. This was a truly sensational concert, one of those rare and magical moments in which the performers truly became one with their music. It was a night when they, the audience and the entire atmosphere of the hall, became super-charged with the enervating presence of something very powerful. The shouts of ecstasy that spontaneously arose from the audience right throughout the night is testimony to the remarkable transcendent aesthetic effect that these musicians were able to invoke, and which we hope you will also savour. Raga Bageshri is presented in a ninety minute feast that celebrates the finest on offer of the classical tradition of Hindustani music.

This DVD provides a number of options for your listening pleasure. You can experience the concert through crisp digital vision and multi-track sound, making you feel as though you are sitting right in the middle of the hall. At the same time, for those interested to know more about the music, there is a easily accessible voice commentary accompanying the entire performance that explains how it all works and fits together. There is also the option of text subtitles that keep you informed of the different sections of the raga as they unfold. To complete the experience, there is the option of viewing a short film The Taste of Hindustani Music, made especially for this DVD, which explains the basic principles of raga through Indian cooking. This little entrée also includes helpful descriptions and historical outlines of the sitar and tabla.

Notes on Artists:

The Artists

Ustad Shahid Parvez is privileged with both belonging to an illustrious musical family, and for achieving success in not only preserving the tradition but in pushing its boundaries to even greater heights of aesthetic beauty. He is one of the most brilliant musical gems of the famous Etawah gharana (family/school) of sitar – playing and belongs to the seventh generation of this musical heritage. This family has produced the most revered and influential figures in modern Hindustani instrumental music. During the course of the twentieth century Ustad Enayat Khan and Ustad Vilayat Khan successively reinterpreted and redefined instrumental music, and their legacy is still strongly felt today. Shahid Parvez’s father, Ustad Aziz Khan, was a famous musician and a noted composer, and Shahid’s grandfather Ustad Wahid Khan was a surbahar and sitar virtuoso. As is the custom, Aziz Khan initially taught his son vocal music and tabla, before training him on the sitar over many years with all the intensity and rigour that had made this family famous.
The young Shahid was recognised as a child prodigy early on, and had started performing in public by the time he was only eight years of age. Now some four decades on, Shahid has matured into an artist with an enormous capability to move the listener. The power of his music is most immediately encountered in the highly charged sound quality he conjures from his sitar and the sparkling intelligence that is the hallmark of his improvisatory magic. Hard work and dogged perseverance over the years has been also rewarded with an extraordinary technical prowess on the instrument and a mastery over layakari [rhythmic play]. An extensive list of recordings , numerous awards and accolades, and a distinguished performance career in India and around the world have deservedly made this sitar player the highly sort after and respected artist he is today.

Pandit Anindo Chatterjee is arguably the finest tabla player in India. By the time he was five years old, he was training under the legendary Ustad Afaq Hussain Khan and in the same year, he had amazingly also become All India Radio's youngest recording artist. For the next twenty years or so, the guidance of Padmabhushan Gyan Prakash Ghosh laid the solid foundation for Anindo Chatterjee's art to flourish to the extent it has today. He is well known for his sense of balance and proportion, crisp tonal quality, modulation of sound production, highly intuitive feel for rhythm and melody, and exceptional rapport with his fellow musicians. Since 1972, Panditji has been highly prized as both a solo artist and as an accompanist in high demand by top ranking artists in Hindustani music. Today, he leads his generation of tabla players belonging to the Farrukhabad gharana and is the most sought after tabla player in India. 

Individually, Ustad Shahid Parvez and Pandit Anindo Chatterjee have earned illustrious international reputations as perhaps the finest exponents of the sitar and tabla. Their performances together, however, are positively explosive. Their collaboration exudes sheer delight and is soaked with the sensuality of some of the most scintillating sounds you are ever likely to hear. This DVD of a live concert in Melbourne, Australia in 2002 captures the superb music of these two maestros and shows how they undeniably possesses the power to ignite the imagination and fire the soul. It is a truly enlightening insight into the rich, passionate and sublime world of Hindustani Music