Kaushiki Chakraborty

Kaushiki Chakraborty was born in Kolkata on 24 October 1980 to Chandana Chakraborty and the vocalist Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty. She sang in public for the first time at the age of seven, a tarana at the Calcutta Rowing Club, and accompanied her father on tour from the late 1980s.

At ten she began formal study at the academy of Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh, who had also taught her father. She later joined the ITC Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata, graduating in 2004, and continued training with her father at his school Shrutinandan. From 2002 she also studied Carnatic music with Dr M. Balamuralikrishna. Alongside her music she read philosophy at Jogamaya Devi College, Kolkata, and took a master's degree at Jadavpur University.

Her concert work has included the Dover Lane Music Conference, the ITC Sangeet Sammelan, the Sawai Gandharva Bhimsen Mahotsav and the Darbar Festival in London, where several of her recitals have been filmed. A London concert given in August 2003, with her father accompanying on harmonium, was issued as the album "Pure". In 2005 she received the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in the Asia-Pacific category.

A Patiala approach to khayal — the gharana's open-throated production and fast taan work — carried across a wide range, and set beside the lighter forms of thumri, dadra and bhajan that she programmes in the same recital.