Purbayan Chatterjee

Purbayan Chatterjee learned the sitar from his father, Pandit Parthapratim Chatterjee, who was himself a student of Pandit Nikhil Banerjee and of the sarod player Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Through that training he belongs to the Senia-Maihar gharana founded by Ustad Allauddin Khan — the lineage of Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Nikhil Banerjee — and he describes its character as a synthesis of dhrupad weight with the lyricism of khayal.

He was given the President of India award as the best instrumentalist in the country at the age of fifteen, and later received the Sangeet Natak Akademi's Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar.

His concert work runs in two directions. He plays full-length raga recitals in India and abroad, including at the Darbar Festival, and he leads the band Classicool, through which he has recorded and performed with musicians including Ustad Zakir Hussain, Béla Fleck, Shankar Mahadevan and players from the ensemble Snarky Puppy. He also tours in India with the flautist Rakesh Chaurasia and the tabla player Ojas Adhiya.

A Senia-Maihar approach to the sitar: slow, dhrupad-derived alap before the composition, and gatkari that keeps the gharana's long melodic lines rather than favouring speed alone.