ITC Sangeet Research Academy

ITC Sangeet Research Academy, usually written ITC SRA, is a residential-style teaching academy in Tollygunge, Kolkata, run as an independent public charitable trust. It is an institution, not a gharana: its gurus have come from the Rampur-Sahaswan, Kirana, Agra, Jaipur-Atrauli and Benares traditions among others, and scholars study with the guru assigned to them rather than with the academy as a whole. Its own account of itself is unusually explicit about method — the aim, it says, was "to establish a modern Gurukul and revive the traditional Guru-Shishya Parampara" — and about independence: it states that it would never seek monetary help from government.

The academy selects a small number of scholars who live and learn under a resident guru, rather than running open classes. Vocal music has been taught from the beginning; instrumental training was introduced in 2002, under a department headed by the sarod player Buddhadev Dasgupta, long a member of its expert committee. Alongside teaching, the academy runs research and archiving of recordings and traditional material, and its published aims name an effective training system, the rationalising of traditional data through modern research methods, and preservation.

Its gurus as listed on its own site are Ajoy Chakrabarty, Ulhas Kashalkar, Partha Chatterjee, Subhra Guha, Uday Bhawalkar, Omkar Dadarkar, Brajeswar Mukherjee and Abir Hossain — current as published in September 2026. Historically the founding faculty were of a different generation entirely: Nisar Hussain Khan (Rampur-Sahaswan), Hirabai Barodekar (Kirana), Ishtiaq Hussain Khan (Rampur), Nivrittibua Sarnaik (Jaipur-Atrauli), Girija Devi (Benares) and Latafat Hussain Khan (Agra). Rashid Khan, Ajoy Chakrabarty and Kaushiki Chakraborty are among its alumni.

Scholars are taken on full scholarship and live on the grounds, with access to an archive of books, recordings and manuscripts. Beyond the teaching, the Sammelan is how the academy faces the public: its own scholars and musician tutors share the three evenings with musicians from outside, and the record of who played each year is published on its site.

ITC's involvement with music began with the ITC Sangeet Sammelan held in Delhi in 1971, a festival that also endowed a cash award for one of the oldest living musicians of stature. The company went on to pioneer corporate patronage of Hindustani music at a scale previously unknown, at a time when royal patronage had withdrawn; the academy followed in 1977 as an independent public charitable trust, professionally managed by a board of trustees.

The annual ITC Sangeet Sammelan continues under the academy's name. The academy published a monthly concert schedule for September 2026 and maintains admissions, alumni and tutor listings, so it is operating; this description was last checked in September 2026. Current admissions and fees should be taken from its own site.

The timing was not incidental. The privy purse — the payment made to the former ruling families of the princely states after Independence — was abolished in 1971, and the musicians who had depended on those courts lost their patrons. The academy's own site and its Wikipedia entry date the trust to 1977; an ITC press release of 2001 and some later reports give 1978, and that difference is left unresolved here.

The academy occupies a white heritage building at Tollygunge, on grounds ITC had previously used for training, with lawns on which the Sangeet Sammelan is held each December. Its lifetime award, the ITC Sangeet Samman, went to Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar in 2024 and to Begum Parveen Sultana at the 54th Sammelan in December 2025. The academy reaches its fiftieth year in 2027.