Kolkata: Renowned sarod player Arnab Bhattacharya firmly believes that “only music has the ability to change the world.” Born and brought up...
Kolkata: Renowned sarod player Arnab Bhattacharya firmly believes that “only music has the ability to change the world.” Born and brought up in a musical family in Kolkata it was but natural for Arnab to develop a keen interest in music. At just 4 and a half years of age he took his baby steps in music under the guidance of his father Swapan Bhattacharya, going on to learn the detailed aspects of music and sarod from his guruji, late Pandit Buddhadeb Dasgupta. Under the able guidance of his guruji, Arnab learnt the rich repertoire of the Senia Shahjahanpur Gharana. In 1999 he got the degree of Sarod Prabhakar from Allahabad University.
After completing
his engineering in Computer Science from Bhubaneswar he travelled around the
globe for his work. Subsequently he left his lucrative corporate career and
chose to pursue his passion, Sarod.
He was conferred
with the titles of Sarod Sundar in 2005, Sarod Nayak in 2007 and Nabin
Sarod in 2009 from Orissa.
Arnab has played the
sarod in innumerable prestigious events across the globe like the Taj
Mahal festival, Sankat Mochan Utsav, Rajya Sangeet Academy, Raja Rani Festival,
All India Music Festival, World Music Festival, Geneva Drums and Music Festival,
Swar Festival of Singapore, various branches of Ramakrishna Mission and other
events across the globe.
He has been invited
to perform and conduct workshops by the High Commission of India, Singapore,
Bangladesh, South Africa, the USA, Central Asia and Mauritius.
His first album, ‘Music
Ecstasy’ was released in 2009 followed Spectrum in 2012, Varsha in 2010,
Evening Ecstasy in 2019, In Conversation Part 1 and 2 and Dark Inside both in
2020.
He has also collaborated
with many eminent international musicians from Durban, Bangladesh, South
Africa, Germany, the USA, Uzbegistan, Dubai and Malaysia.
He is a regular
artist in All India Radio and an empanelled artist of ICCR. In1 997 he went
on his first International tour to Spain and Portugal. Even today he remembers that
once he had he had performed at a whole night concert for the third gender. In
the morning after the concert saw him getting an overwhelming response.
Currently he is working
on an instrumental and a vocal album in collaboration with multiple eminent
artists around the world.
The pandemic has
impacted his tours, but work has not stopped and has gone into online mode. With
schools in Mauritius and Durban, the classes too are being held online so that
his students don’t suffer. The Mauritius government is helping him a lot.
Arnab strongly
feels that every family at least one member should be involved in music and
every school should include music as a mandatory subject in its curriculum as
it would definitely have a positive impact on society.
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