A Renewed Wave of Indian Music in Boston This Spring

The Spring is here and unlike the last two years mired by the worldwide pandemic, this spring brings a bounty of Indian Musical events to the Boston area. LearnQuest Academy of Music in partnership with other music organizations, First Edition Arts of Mumbai, MITHAS, Global Arts Live and Marathi Cinema of Boston, is presenting and promoting a series of Indian Classical music events, both virtual as well as live in person formats.

These events began in January with the Blue Planet Music Festival, a six month long digital festival of Indian Classical Music featuring 21 leading Carnatic and Hindustani musicians and more than 40  co-artists. The festival features some of the most prominent Hindustani and Carnatic musicians which include such stalwart artists as Ulhas Kashalkar, Budhaditya Mukherjee, TM Krishna, Abhishek Raghuram, S. Sowmya, Ashwini Bhide Deshpande, Venkatesh Kumar, Uday Bhawalkar, Ramakrishnan Murthy, Malladi Brothers and several more. A new concert or set of concerts are released approximately every fortnight and remain available for repeat viewing till the end of the festival on June 30^th, 2022. For more details, please visit www.learnquest.org/springfest22.

The Blue Planet Festival is sponsored by The First Edition Arts of Mumbai and is presented in the Boston area in collaboration with MITHAS (MIT Heritage of Arts of South Asia).

The month of April begins with a Marathi biopic titled “Mee Vasantrao”, based on the life of the legendary Hindustani vocalist and Natyasangeet megastar Pt. Vasantrao Deshpande followed by three live in person concerts featuring – the renowned violinist L. Shankar with Abhijeet Banerjee on the Tabla; Tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain with master artists Kala Ramnath on the violin and Jayanthi Kumaresh on the veena; Rahul Deshpande and Priyanka Barve in a Natyasangeet and Ghazal concert. The detailed schedule for these events is as follows:­

Movie: MEE VASANTRAO

April 2, Saturday, at 12 pm

Apple Cinemas, Cambridge, MA

Concert: L. SHANKAR WITH ABHIJIT BANERJEE AND ROHAN KRISHNAMURTHY

April 3, Sunday, 7:30 PM

Berklee Performance Center

Concert: ZAKIR HUSSAIN, JAYANTHI KUMARESH, KALA RAMNATH

April 17, Sunday, 7:30 PM

SOMERVILLE THEATRE

Concert: Vasantotsav - Natyasangeet and Ghazals

Featuring Rahul Deshpande and Priyanka Barve

April 30, Saturday, 4 PM

For more details and to purchase tickets please visit: www.learnquest.org/springfest22.

The L. Shankar and Zakir Hussain concerts are sponsored by Global Arts Live of Cambridge, MA, and the movie and Rahul Deshpande concert is presented in collaboration with Marathi Cinema of Boston.

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