Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty

Ajoy Chakrabarty was born in Kolkata on 25 December 1952 to Ajit Kumar Chakrabarty and Mahamaya Devi. His father was his first teacher. He took his B.A. and M.A. in music at Rabindra Bharati University, and in 1977 became the first scholar to graduate from the ITC Sangeet Research Academy.

Beyond his father he studied with Pannalal Samanta, Kanaidas Bairagi, Munawar Ali Khan and Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh, and took further training from Latafat Hussain Khan, Nivruttibua Sarnaik and Hirabai Barodekar. He also studied Carnatic music with Dr M. Balamuralikrishna. Alongside khayal he sings thumri, tappa, bhajan, kirtan and lighter and film repertoire in several languages.

He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and Preservation Hall in the United States, the Royal Albert Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Inspired by his guru Jnan Prakash Ghosh, he founded Shrutinandan, where he teaches; his daughter Kaushiki Chakraborty trained there alongside her academy study.

His honours include the Kumar Gandharva National Award (1993), the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1999–2000), the Padma Shri (2011), the Banga Bibhushan and Maha Sangeet Samman (2012), the National Tansen Samman (2015) and the Padma Bhushan (2020).

His own account of his training, on the Shrutinandan website, names more teachers than any single gharana label allows. The first guidance came from his father Ajit Kumar Chakraborty, with Pannalal Samanta and Kanaidas Bairagi, before he was accepted by Jnan Prakash Ghosh; the training then continued under Munawar Ali Khan, son of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, which is the direct line behind his claim on the Patiala-Kasur gayaki. He also studied with Latafat Hussain Khan of the Agra gharana, Nivrittibua Sarnaik, Hirabai Barodekar, and — in the Carnatic idiom — M. Balamuralikrishna.

The institutional side of his career runs through the ITC Sangeet Research Academy, which he joined in 1977 as its first outstanding scholar, becoming its only gold medallist fellow, a member of its experts' committee and a senior guru. He graduated top of his class in music for both his BA and MA at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata. He teaches at Shrutinandan, the school he founded in Tollygunge, Kolkata.

The honours are recorded slightly differently by different bodies. His own site lists the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 1999–2000, the Kumar Gandharva Samman of 1993, the Best Male Playback Singer award for the Bengali film Chhandaneer in 1990, and the Padma Shri in 2011; Wikipedia adds the Padma Bhushan in 2020. He has sung and recorded widely outside the classical forms as well — thumri, tappa, kirtan, folk and film songs, in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Persian.

Patiala-Kasur khayal: a wide-ranging voice used for elaborate taan work and ornament, and a recital habit of following the khayal with thumri, tappa or a Bengali song rather than closing on the raga alone.