Sandip Burman - Improvised Indian classical music | Press Releases

5 p.m., Sunday, September 18, 2011
Fairfield University's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts

Image: Sandip Burman The 2011-2012 Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts' Music season begins at 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 18, 2011 , with a concert of improvised Indian classical music performed by Sandip Burman on the tabla, tarang and sitar. He will be accompanied by John Gardner on the harmonica. The performance takes place in the Quick Center's Wien Experimental Theatre. Tickets are $20.

Sandip Burman is a native of Durgapur, India, whose love and dedication of the tabla began at age 6 when he began studying with Shri Sudhir Roy. He later became a student of the late distinguished tabla master, Pandit Shyamal Bose, of Calcutta. His unyielding dedication and enthusiasm has driven him to continually challenge himself as a student and to grow musically beyond tabla playing into four different instruments, the tabla, tabla tarang, sitar and voice. His performances are marked with spontaneous innovation and tonal purity merged with complex rhythmic patterns (tala) or melodies (raga).

Sandip Burman has given solo performances at the Kennedy Center, the Ravinia Festival (Chicago), the Percussive Arts Society Conference (PASIC), and with the Nashville Symphony. He has worked alongside some of the foremost Indian and Western musicians in the world, ranging from Ravi Shankar to Andy Narrell, and performed on stages from the Ali Akbar Music College Festival and Monterey World One Festival to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Wolf Trap. He also organized and arranged a tour with jazz legends Jack DeJohnette, Jerry Goodman, Randy Brecker, Howard Levy, Paul McCandless, Steve Smith, Dave Pietro and Paul Bollenback. While exploring world music, jazz, Western classical and movie soundtracks, Sandip has played on albums such as "Facing East," "Vishnu," and "Outbound," and contributed to Danny Elfman's soundtrack of Tim Burton's film, Mars Attacks . Always in search of new challenges, Sandip wrote his first Western Classical piece for wind ensemble and string quartet with Gary Hill and Jonathan Moser. He also teaches master classes and performs at prestigious institutions world-wide.

This is not his first time to the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. In 2000, Sandip Burman performed here with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones in a concert that was recorded, filmed and released on CD and DVD by Warner Brothers Records in 2002 as "Live at the Quick."

John Gardner is a versatile harmonica player from San Antonio, TX, who relocated to Chicago in 2005, where he became immersed in the city's electric blues tradition and soon-after began studying Indian Ghandarva Ved music with Sandip Burman. His most recent performances include the Summer Days Festival in Ft. Benton, MN, Baldwin-Wallace College in Cleveland, OH, and Yishun Town Collegiate in Singapore.

Tickets are available through the Quick Center Box Office: (203) 254-4010, or toll-free 1-877-ARTS-396 (1-877-278-7396). Tickets can also be purchased online at fairfield.edu/quick .

The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts's Wien Experimental Theatre is located on the campus of Fairfield University at 1073 North Benson Road in Fairfield, Connecticut. Entrance to the Quick Center is through the Barlow Road gate at 200 Barlow Road. Free, secure parking is available. Access for people with disabilities is available throughout the Quick Center for audience members and performers. Hearing amplification devices are available upon request at the Box Office. Fairfield University is located off exit 22 of Interstate-95. For further information and directions, call (203) 254-4010 or 1-877-278-7396, or visit fairfield.edu/quick