Math & Cultural

Harmonic Series: MSRI's 2016-17 Concert Series presents

The Art of Improvisation, featuring Purnaprajna Bangere, violin, accompanied by Amit Kavthekar, tabla

Thursday, October 20th from 5:15-6:30 p.m.
MSRI's Simons Auditorium, 17 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720
Free and open to the public

Purnaprajna Bangere

Purnaprajna comes from a important school of violin players in India. He had rigorous training under the well known south Indian violinist and a teacher of great repute HKN Murthy, the student of the legendary Indian musician M. S. Gopalakrishnan. Purnaprajna is a representative of his school, and plays the style of music known as the Parur style, characterized by high technical virtuosity and musicianship. In the last two years, he has been invited to give solo recitals in prestigious music festivals such as the Learnquest Music Festival in Boston, the Cleveland Music Festival, and the Toronto Music festival. Purnaprajna has recently come up with a geometric framework (from algebraic geometry) to explore new music and is currently working on this with David Balakrishnan, the director of the Grammy Award-winning musical group Turtle Island String Quartet. Purna's music website is: www.purnaviolin.com
 

Amit Kavthekar

​Young and talented Amit Kavthekar (the last disciple of the late Ustad Allarakha) has rhythm running in his veins. At the early age of six, when most the children of his age were playing about, he was being groomed in the art of tabla playing by great maestro Ustad Allarakha. Since 1991, he was fortunate to be taught tabla intricacies by the world famous tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain. Amit has played with some of the greatest Indian musicians such as Ustad Zakir Hussain and Sivamani on Zee TV in India and Pt. Shivkumar Sharma in his documentary directed by Jabbar Patel. He has accompanied Pt. Jasraj, Ustad Shahid Parvez, Ustad Ashish Khan, Pt. Buddhadev Dasgupta, and Pt. Kushal Das. Amit currently teaches at the New England School of Music in Boston.

EVENT INFORMATION

Parking is free beginning at 5:00 p.m. All Harmonic Series concerts are free of charge and open to the public. For more information, contact Jennifer Murawski at jmurawski@msri.org or (510) 642-0771.

RELATED PROGRAMMING

This event is held in conjunction with an MSRI / Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing / Math Department Colloquium: 

A Meta-Mathematical Framework for Integrating Indian Classical and Western Music

Friday, October 21st from 3:30-4:30 p.m.
Calvin Lab Auditorium at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing Auditorium, University of California, Berkeley campus (Map)

Featuring a joint talk by Purnaprajna Bangere and David Balakrisnan. More details about this event can be found here.

MSRI 2016-17 HARMONIC SERIES CONCERTS

Thursday, September 15, 2016: Del Sol String Quartet
Thursday, October 20, 2016: The Art of Improvisation, featuring Purnaprajna Bangere, violin, accompanied by Amit Kavthekar, tabla
Thursday, March 9, 2017: Torbie Phillips & the Jason Martineau Trio