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Event
Concert with Gautam Tejas Ganeshan
"A dream...passionate, knowledgeable, mindblowing." - Asian Art Museum
"An incredible presence...gentle renegade performance." - Berkeleyside
"A magnet for local Indian classical musicians..." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Subversive...affecting and bold." - East Bay Express
"New music from an old tradition..." - SFJAZZ
"A local treasure..." - SF Classical Voice
Gautam Tejas Ganeshan's authentic voice and intelligent approach breathe new life into an old tradition. His concerts reflect a traditional aesthetic, embracing a classical style instantly recognizable to aficionados worldwide, and transforming it through the creation of an ongoing body of original works based in love and understanding of Carnatic music - its elaborate structures, extensive improvisations, and the utmost sincerity that distinguishes its greatest practitioners.
Delivered in chamber ensembles, his performances are typically presented strictly acoustically, with nothing plugged in, honoring the strictures adopted by an earlier generation of musicians. But in rendering exclusively his own songs, he inflects this highly cultured musical heritage through himself, expressing authenticity more than ethnicity, immediacy more than nostalgia, and allowing listeners the unprecedented experience of having a natural linguistic purchase on the complex song forms of a rich oral tradition.
He has performed widely in the SF Bay Area since 2004, including at the SFMOMA, BAM/PFA, SFJAZZ, Asian Art Museum (SF), Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley, Zellerbach Playhouse, ODC Theater, Palace of Fine Arts, Yoshi's, Freight & Salvage, Julia Morgan Theater, UC Botanical Garden, Brick & Mortar Music Hall, and more.
In recognition of the quality of his work, Gautam was awarded the Creative Work Fund in 2013, supporting the creation of the song cycle entitled "Story of This Place", and has received a number of commissions, including "By Daylight" at the ODC Theater, "Silhouette of Songs" by the LEF Foundation, and "New Directions in Indian Classical Music" by the San Francisco Foundation in 2008.
Gautam has conducted workshops at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Stanford Jazz Workshop, and more, and has guest-lectured for many courses at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, including Music Theory, Music of India, and the Contemporary Improvisation Ensemble. He was also one of the inaugural performing artists-in-residence at the Red Poppy Art House in SF in 2007.
As founder and director of the Sangati Center, Gautam is also "a magnet for local Indian classical musicians" (SF Chronicle). The Sangati Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that has hosted more than 400 public chamber concerts of Indian classical music since 2006, earning support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, and others, as well as the goodwill of thousands of listeners and musicians local and abroad.
Gautam often lends his voice in support of the movement towards a local economy. At the Green Festival SF 2012, he contributed his music to the crowd as an interlude after the speech of Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. His singing opened each night of "From the Field to the Table", a series of performances at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Playhouse bringing to light issues inherent in industrialized food production. At the East Bay Center for Performing Arts, he sang to introduce a documentary screening of "Bitter Seeds", about the epidemic of suicides among farmers in India indebted to multinational seed companies. He performed for the annual members' meeting of the Ecology Center in 2015, the organization responsible for pioneering curbside recycling more than 40 years before, and one of the few non-profits to remain in the recycling business, besides running Berkeley's Farmers' Markets. And on Election Night 2012, he offered a spontaneous song to students in "Edible Education", a course led by Michael Pollan as a critical look at the food movement for both university students and the community at large.
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LocationSubterranean Arthouse (View)
2179 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: Yes! |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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