Creating music for divine experience

The performance of the disciples of Pandit Ravi Shankar Lakshay Mohan Gupta (Sitar) and Aayush Mohan Gupta’s (Sarod) of Hindustani Classical Music have won the hearts of audiences at prestigious classical music festivals and venues across the world. They have performed at The Grammy Museum, Los Angeles; India Fine Arts Academy among others.

Recently, Lakshay and Aayush, performed in New Delhi for ‘The Golden Symphony Tour’ with composer and cellist Barry Phillips. They have been performing folk, new, classical and Indian classical/crossover music for many years. They performed jugalbandi on July 29 in Mangalore and will perform on August 3 in Mumbai.

In a conversation, the brothers reflect on their journey, fusion music, and music concerts and more.
The young brothers, Lakshay and Aayush, hail from the Maihar Gharana, are well-known amongst the music fraternity and art connoisseurs.

“Although we hail from a non-musical family our father was an amateur sitarist and our parents wanted us to take up classical music professionally and preserve this tradition. And that was the reason that we got an atmosphere conducive to developing a keen interest in classical music at home.

We were always listening to this music in our childhood as far back as we can remember. During all the school and college years we were learning music and had started performing professionally. The thoughts of any other career never arose in our minds,” Lakshya shares.

“We have been given a strong foundation in the Maihar style of playing by Sharan Rani, who is a Padmabhushan awardee and Pandit Uma Shankar Mishra. We have also studied extensively with Pandit Balwant Rai Verma (senior most disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar) and Pandit Tejendra Majumdar. Pandit Ravi Shankar Ji decided to launch us for our debut USA tour under his foundation after he heard our performance in 2012 in Delhi and gave us his blessings,” adds Aayush.

About their collaboration, they said: “In April 2015, we became the first Indians to perform at the Grammy Museum, Los Angeles. The historic concert happened at the launch of the year-long exhibition ‘Ravi Shankar: A life in music’.

This concert saw us present some of the oldest Indian classical compositions to the western audience along with our collaboration with the American cellist Barry Phillips. The ‘Golden Symphony Tour’ brings to India this collaboration along with our unique Sitar-Sarod duet. This musical extravaganza will tour three cities – we are done with Delhi and now we will perform in Mangalore and Mumbai.

What is unique about your music performances? “At the Grammy Museum LA, we performed a piece composed by Ravi Shankar as it was the opening of the exhibition on his life and music. The performance and rehearsals were an enlightening experience for us,” says Aayush.

For the ‘Golden Symphony Tour,’ the duo is composing a new piece, which is an organic blend of Indian and Western classical traditions. “It is not possible to identify the two genres individually, but at the same time, we'll be improvising within the classical raga discipline. It is for the first time that these three instruments - Sitar, sarod and cello are coming together on stage,” Lakshay informs.

About the style of fusion music and how they created their share they duo says, “In the tour, we will be demonstrating our own vision of East-West collaboration.

We have observed that while experimenting if you get too much carried away by your imagination, there's a good chance that the musical aesthetics might be sacrificed. So, it will be a playing together creating new kind of music but within the classical discipline.”