By India New England News Staff
WESTON, MA—With 400 attendees daily and 45 musicians, LearnQuest Academy of Music concluded its three-day-long 12th annual Music Conference at Regis College in Weston, MA last Sunday. Organizers said that of the 45 artists, 39 traveled from India to participate in the conference, which has now become an annual must-attend event for Indian classical musicians from around the world.
“We are quite happy that the Music Conference went well, and the audience loved the music presented by the artists,” said Pradeep Shukla, president of Waltham, MA-based LearnQuest Academy, a non-profit institution that provides formal instruction in Indian classical and light music.
He said a total of 45 artists participated in the conference, with 39 of them from India and 6 from the United States.
Shukla said that after the concerts, which concluded on Sunday, some educational activities continue at LearnQuest under the music conference umbrella, namely, a four-day workshop by the Guitar Maestro Debashish Bhattacharya and a three-day intensive Dhrupad workshop by Gundecha Brothers.
“This is a great opportunity for the music students of our area to learn from some of the master musicians who performed at the music festival,” Shukla said.
This year’s conference was chaired by Anish Khanzode and supported about two dozen volunteers.
“There were quite a few artists from the younger generation, such as Carnatic vocalists the Trichur Brothers, Hindustani vocalists the Mishra Brothers and Ruchira Panda, the Carnatic-Hindustani Percussion Ensemble Damaru, and Sitar-Sarangi Jugalbandi by Rajib Karmakar and Suhail Khan with Sandeep Das on the Tabla,” said Khanzode. “We are heartened that all of them were well-received by the audience. In addition to mesmerizing music by the artists, one of the highlights of the conference was that the legendary Carnatic violinist Prof. T. N. Krishnan was given the LearnQuest Lifetime Achievement Award.”
The award was presented to Krishan by well-known Carnatic violin teacher Tara Bangalore, who spoke very eloquently about Prof. Krishnan’s accomplishments in music.
