Newsletter July / August 2015

Content

1. Holiday Time - Restricted Service in August
2. Sounds for Inner Peace - Dhrupad Workshop with the Gundechas
3. To India and Back Again: The Harmonium Story (3/5) - Ban
 4. Maihar in Germanistan (3) - University of the Arts Rotterdam
5. India at the Thames and the Spree - Festivals in London and Berlin
6. Jai's Blog - The power of song
7. Workshops - August to October
8. Concerts - August & September

1. Holiday Time - Restricted Service in August
- Company Info -

It is holiday time in our shop in Berlin from 8th to 26th of August. During this time we can not offer our regular service. That means:

* Urgent and time-dependent orders can not be handled during the holiday time.
* Visits in the shop are only possible by special appointment, nobody will be answering the landline telephone, and shipping of orders may take a few days longer than usual.
* Email communication will not be affected by the restrictions - we'll try to continue answering all enquiries quickly and we'll keep on taking orders and reservations.

We beg your pardon for the inconvenience!

2. Sounds for Inner Peace - Dhrupad Workshop with the Gundechas
- Review by Hildebrand Ross -

How much can music touch one's soul and broaden the intellectual horizon? I asked myself this question at a dhrupad workshop with the Gundecha brothers in Spain in June 2014. The highlight of this music workshop experience was a concert of Umakant, Ramakant and Akhilesh Gundecha in the Conservatory of Barcelona. During the loud and powerful performance I was in ecstasy several times and remained in a state of total peace and quiet happiness that seemed unviolable to me for several minutes. Until then I had known this indescribable experience only from my meditation practice. For me personally, the sung ragas of dhrupad are a spiritual music, if not a spiritual practice. Some see dhrupad as nada yoga, the yoga of sound. Not only the exceptional concert experience in Barcelona confirmed me in this view, but also my own practice experience. It therefore seemed reasonable to organize the first workshop with the Gundechas in Germany, when the opportunity arose.

The vocalists of the Gundechas are the elder brothers, Umakant and Ramakant. They learned from the famous dhrupad singer Zia Fariduddin Dagar and from Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, master of the rudra veena. Their vocal art is marked by exceptional colouring of sound, fine definition and precise rhythm. Their voices merge so perfectly that their combined singing is often perceived not as two separate singers, but as complete oneness. The youngest brother, Akhilesh, plays the barrel drum pakhawaj and also gives private lessons in singing. He studied pakhawaj with the famous percussionists Shrikant Mishra and Raja Chhatrapati Singh.

For over 25 years the Gundechas have been touring the world. In 1992 they had their first major tour of Germany as part of the Festival of India. Today they are among the most important performers of dhrupad. This is based not only on their superb vocal technique and artistic depth but also on persistent practicing together for decades. Apart from successful performers, the Gundechs are also exceptionally qualified teachers: they take dhrupad very seriously and pass on their knowledge with immaculate precision and patient devotion in workshops and in their own dhrupad school.

In May, the first one-week dhrupad workshop with the Gundechas in Germany took place on the Baltic Sea. It was housed in a former village school in an idyllic beach resort near Sehlendorf and was attended by 19 participants from all over Germany, England and Switzerland. Language of instruction was English. The daily programme began before five am, i.e. before sunrise, with vocal exercises on the beach. Every day there were group classes as well as individual lessons with the Gundechas. Phonation was as much part of the training as rhythm exercises, learning of compositions in various ragas and talas and work on nuances of intonation and improvisation. That way everybody could broaden horizons and deepen skills, whether a beginner or an experienced professional musician. Some participants also brought instruments with them and received special guidance on pakhawaj, sitar or bansuri.

My personal experience in this workshop was quite different from the one a year before. But it still had primarily a spiritual dimension. Therefore I was not surprised to see tears as an expression of deep emotion during the lessons in many participants. "One of the most intensive learning experiences of my life", concluded one participant of the workshop. Another: "This week was such a beautiful gift for me - I feel like I spent a long intense period somewhere in paradise." A participating music therapist said: "I have incorporated the inspiration and the method into my own music lessons. What an enrichment!" Another person wrote: "I learned a lot this week and I feel more secure in my other choir." The many moving moments reconciled me with some of the troubles of organising the workshop. Now the next workshop with the Gundechas in April 2016 is in the planning ...

Details on the workshop in 2016.
Infos on the dhrupad school of the Gundechas in Bhopal.
Dhrupad lessons in Europe with Amelia Cuni.

3. To India and Back Again: The Harmonium Story (3/5) - Ban
- Background Story by Yogendra -

The harmonium is an integral part of many Indian vocal styles and of the global kirtan movement. However, it is originally a European instrument. How could it get established in India and spread back all over the world from there? An exciting story full of amazing twists... In the first two episodes we told of the invention of the pedal harmonium in Europe, its spread and its transformation into the Indian hand harmonium.

In the first decades of the 20th century, the Indianised harmonium - played sitting on the floor with one hand while the other hand pumps the bellows - spread almost everywhere in India. It became as popular in religious music (like hindu bhajans and kirtans, sufi qawwalis or sikh shabads) as in film and theatre music and in the classical and semi-classical North Indian styles khyal, thumri and ghazal. In all these different musical forms, the harmonium occupied an accompanying role: It supported the singers with drone sounds or chords, added richness by playing the melody in unison, or it filled gaps in the song and thus ensured a continuous flow. It often replaced the traditional bowed instrument sarangi, which until then was the first choice for the accompaniment of the classical and semi-classical vocal styles in Northern India.

The sarangi is a complex instrument, able to imitate the finest nuances of the human voice with amazing accuracy - but also with many strings to be tuned, and with a difficult playing technique that requires long years of practice. In the first half of the 20th century, the sarangi was closely associated with the milieu of traditional courtesans and the debauchery of the Indian princely courts, which were despised by the new nationalistic Indian elites with their modern westernised mindsets. This association gave the sarangi a somewhat dubious moral reputation. That way the harmonium had not only practical but also social advantages over the sarangi: It didn't have to be tuned all the time, had a consistent intonation, was fairly easy to play and was a modern and morally impeccable instrument. Only the classical South Indian music and the North Indian dhrupad style resisted the introduction of the harmonium. In South India, the violin asserted its place as an accompaniment for raga music, because it was more sturdy and simple than the sarangi and provided more artistic scope than the harmonium. And dhrupad puts so much emphasis on flexible and precise intonation for each individual raga that the rigid tuning of the harmonium was simply unacceptable.

After the early beginnings at the end of the 19th century, independent Indian harmonium production developed on a larger scale in the first half of the 20th century. Many of today's market leaders like Dwarkin, Pakrashi and Monoj Kumar Sardar in Calcutta, Bina in Delhi or Haribhau Vishwanath (with the brand Paloma) in Mumbai, have their origins in that period. The only problem for Indian harmonium manufacturers was their dependency on imported European reeds. Around the time of World War II, however, production of Indian reeds was started in the town of Palitana in Gujarat. War-related difficulties with supply of reeds from Europe might have facilitated the breakthrough of the domestic reed production. Shortly after the end of World War II, around the time of Indian independence in 1947, the regular import of harmoniums from Europe had become unprofitable and ended. The Indianisation of the harmonium had been completed on the production level as well.

However, the triumph of the harmonium in India also met with some resistance, especially among intellectuals. The controversial debate centered around the question whether or not it was at all possible to play classical Indian ragas on the harmonium. The answer required a definition of the essence of raga music. At this point the dispute quickly led to a heated ideological level: The Indian independence movement was seeking symbols of cultural unity for the multiethnic structure that was British India - and found some in the field of music. The nationalists dismissed contemporary raga performance, though, which was mainly handed down by hereditary musicians at the princely courts, as a degeneration of ancient Indian ideals. And the musicians lacked the necessary education to speak up for themselves and contradict this view. Instead of supporting the living tradition, the nationalists took to the Natyashastra, a treatise on dramatic art about 2,000 years old. Their vision was to reestablish ancient Indian greatness, which had supposedly been supressed by ages of foreign rule - and the Natyashastra was a perfect tool for that idea. The text describes the division of the octave into 22 intervals, the so-called shrutis, as the basis of the Indian music system. The harmonium, however, is limited to the 12 equal semitones of Western music and can not produce any sliding pitch variations. Obviously it did not match the requirements of the Natyashastra and was therefore considered fundamentally inept for raga music. Its rapid spreading was even seen as a threat for the alleged true Indian music

On 01/03/1940 the opponents of the harmonium launched their strike: From from that day onwards, All India Radio (AIR), the only Indian radio station at the time, banned the use of the harmonium in its music broadcasts. Music was still played and broadcast live in the radio studios at that time, and AIR employed a large number of musicians with fixed salaries all over the country. The harmonium players among them were dismissed. Freelance harmonium accompanists lost their part-time jobs at AIR. And vocalists who normally performed with harmonium accompaniment had to look for other sidemen when singing for AIR. The ban for artists from courtesan background six years later made it clear that AIR adressed a wider agenda, trying to enforce an ideologically motivated purity notion. Ironically this ideal of purity of Indian music was propagated by the colonial masters - the British controlled AIR up to Indian independence. British musicologists, indologists and radio officials decided what true Indian music was and what it was not. And they tried to impose their ideas of how Indian music should be performed onto Indian musicians. After independance, westernised Indian intellectuals continued along these lines to such an extent that the AIR ban of the harmonium was maintained until 1970.

The next episode of the harmonium story will tell what happened to the harmonium in the West in the meantime, and how the controversy in India was settled in the end ...

4. Maihar in Germanistan (3) - University of the Arts Rotterdam
- Background Story by Yogendra -

Great masters of the Maihar school like Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Nikhil Banerjee and Hariprasad Chaurasia have brought Indian classical music to the West and shaped its image worldwide for decades. We tell their story and show how Maihar musicians contribute to the scene for Indian music in Central Europe today.

Germanistan is not a country with fixed borders but a fantasy term denoting Central Europe. In this sense, the Netherlands are a part of Germanistan as well, of course. And right there, at Codarts, the University of the Arts Rotterdam, flourishes an important center of the Maihar school. As part of the world music programme, Codarts offers a degree course in Indian music, next to Flamenco, Tango, Latin American and Turkish music. The four-year full-time programme offers degrees in vocal, bansuri, sitar, tabla and sarangi. And the artistic director of the department of Indian music is the legendary bansuri virtuoso Hariprasad Chaurasia himself, now 77 years old.

Hariprasad was born the son of a wrestler, was destined for the same profession, and started music relatively late as a teenager. He learned first with a singer in the neighborhood and then with flutist Pandit Bholanath from Varanasi. Hariprasad was already a relatively successful young professional musician and composer, when he met his formative teacher Annapurna Devi in the early 1960s. Annapurna was the only daughter of Allauddin Khan, founder of the Maihar school. She had the same intense musical training with Allauddin Khan as her brother Ali Akbar Khan and was considered as talented and promising as Ali Akbar in her youth. However, she ended her short career when she married Ravi Shankar, and led a reclusive life in Mumbai after the breakup of the marriage, teaching a few hand-picked students in her private apartment. To get accepted as a pupil by Annapurna, one had to be ready to forget all previous knowledge and to start all over again. Hariprasad convinced her of his determination by switching from right-handed to left-handed flute playing - thus being forced to relearn all his fingerings from scratch.

Learning from Annapurna Devi opened a new dimension of music to Hariprasad and shaped all his further artistic life. He adapted the Maihar style, which was dominated by sarod and sitar, for the bansuri, developing a highly differentiated new rhythmic way of playing on his instrument. The long and systematic dhrupad alap, one of the characteristic features of the Maihar school, became part of his bansuri repertoire. Thus he became a celebrated star of Indian music, the formative model of countless bansuri players and a master of creative world music. Annapurna gave him a new inner understanding of his playing as well. In an interview for German radio station WDR he said: "I'm just sitting here, I'm silent, holding a piece of bamboo in my hands, but someone plays on it and someone listens to it, and there's also someone between the audience and me This is a higher power, I suppose - and for this higher power I play, and when this higher power enjoys the music, then we take pleasure in the music, too, the music lovers and me".

After he had successfully established his artistic career, Hariprasad also turned to passing on his knowledge. A welcome opportunity presented itself when the Indian music degree course was started at the former Rotterdam Conservatory. When Joep Bor, founder of the programme and one of the most distinguished experts on Indian music in the world, became head of the World Music department in 1990, he offered Hariprasad to be the artistic director of the Indian music programme. Since then Hariprasad spends several months teaching in Rotterdam every year. One of his best-known western students, Henri Tournier, author of the standard work 'Hariprasad Chaurasia and the Art of Improviation', directs the lessons for the rest of the time. The concept works: Some excellent bansuri players have graduated from Rotterdam, and some of them perform occasionally together with their master. In India, Hariprasad had been teaching privately, training artists with worldwide renown. Best known are probably Rakesh Chaurasia and Rupak Kulkarni. In recent years, Hariprasad has also founded two bansuri schools in Mumbai (2006) and Bhubaneshwar (2010). Educating young talent is now very important to him.

However, unlike the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel, the Indian music department in Rotterdam does not adhere solely to the Maihar school. Although the programme offers a unique opportunity to learn from one of the most famous living masters of the Maihar style in a recognised professional full-time degree course, the teachers of other instruments bring in other Indian traditions as well. And the students are required to study Western music theory, production and recording techniques, world music, music education, crossover projects and music business as well, in addition to their Indian music specialisation. That way the Indian music programme in Rotterdam can be considered a good example of combining tradition, openness and focus on professional job opportunities in the globalised contemporary music world.

Info on the Indian music programme in Rotterdam.
Details on 'Hariprasad Chaurasia and the Art of Improvisation' (textbook and notations with 2 CDs).

5. India at the Thames and the Spree - Festivals in London and Berlin
- Scene Info by Yogendra -

London has the largest population with South Asia roots outside the subcontinent. Berlin is the hip creative metropolis of Central Europe. Both cities host extensive and high-calibre festivals of Indian music this summer. But the concepts at the Thames and the Spree couldn't be more different.

In 1992, the House of World Cultures (HKW), located at the bank of the Spree in central Berlin, had already focused on Indian music by hosting the festival 'Parampara - Indian Music on the Way to the West'. The Parampara-festival showed how the classical raga tradition was taken up and passed on by Western musicians. Indian virtuosos were were featured on stage together with their western master students. The festival gave the impression that raga music was being practiced beyond its culture of origin all over the world, just like Western classical music. 23 years later, the scenario has changed. Raga music has almost disappeared in the West, drowning in the floods of world music and digital music production, and can only assert itself in small niches. Even in India, the tradition is under pressure in the era of globalisation and has to struggle for public attention with innovative showcasing and marketing. That is why many younger Indian raga musicians work parallel with fusion, film and pop music - whether from creative inclinations or for mere subsistence is an open question. This development is reflected in the current festival 'Water Music: Mother India', which takes place as a summer open-air on the premises of the HKW from July 17 to August 8.

In concerts, films, discussions and workshops, 'Water Music: Mother India' shows how the cultural diversity of the subcontinent spread around the world in global migration movements, left traces everywhere on the way, and, in dealing with other cultures, created new artistic forms - even in India itself. Asha Bhosle, one of the most famous Bollywood singers ever and the most recorded artist in the world with over 12,000 songs to her credit, will give her first concert in Germany as part of the music programme. Other featured artists are tabla electronic Talvin Singh and the Folk legend Mike Heron - both will play sets specially created for the festival. There will be bhangra from Brooklyn, the artistic heritage of legendary Indian film composers, Bengali jazz from London, sitar and steel drums from Trinidad, singer-songwriting, sufi chants, ghettotech and DJ sets. Instruments and forms of traditional Indian music will be only one element among many others, merging into various, very eclectic and very contemporary blends. The film programme covers everything from big Bollywood classics like the eponymous Mother India from 1957 up to current controversial independent films like Gandu. The festival will be complemented by the water market with music takeaway, regional Indian cuisine, typical foods, spices, teas, Indian-inspired ice cream, henna painting, yoga and ayurvedic medicine. The boundaries between classical and pop, between art, kitsch and commerce dissolve into a complexity that can connect anything with everything - a very Indian quality. Some might feel bewildered or irritated by the wild mixtures, but in this creative bubbling - a very berlinish quality - you are likely to discover surprising gems.
 
London's prestigious Southbank Centre, directly on the banks of the Thames, offers a rich and complex programme as well, yet with a purely classical orientation. The Darbar Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary there from September 17 to 20. The word darbar, derived from Persian, meant a princely court in Northern India during the Mughal period. These courts included the court musicians with their raga music. The word lives on in the well-known raga darbari-kanada. In keeping with the name, the Darbar Festival focuses exclusively on the cultivation of the classical raga tradition. The annual event was founded in 2006 to commemorate the tabla teacher Bhai Gurmit Singh Ji Virdee (1937 - 2005). Gurmit Singh was considered one of the greatest tabla players of the sikh community. He was born in India, grew up in Kenya and settled in the United Kingdom in 1975. After a spiritual awakening experience in 1977, he gave up his career as a professional tabla player and henceforth only played to accompany gurbani kirtan, the religious music of the sikhs. From then on he devoted his life to the dissemination of the art of tabla as a tabla teacher and as a concert organiser.

The 10th Darbar Festival presents a wide variety of different event formats in four jam-packed days, inviting the public to rich experiences in the realm of raga music in a very contemporary way. Main attraction are the concerts of the stars Kaushiki Chakrabarty (khyal vocal), Irshad Khan (sitar & surbahar) and Shivkumar Sharma (santoor), representing the younger, middle and older generations of Indian master musicians in the large Queen Elizabeth Hall. Numerous other concerts present a wide range of excellent artists, some of them relatively unknown. Several programmes are double features, inviting the audience to explore new musical territory. Vocal and instrumental music, percussion, North Indian and South Indian tradition, morning, afternoon and evening concerts, older and younger styles, large hall and intimate chamber music setting - everything is covered here. Concerts, the heart of the festival, are complemented by an ambitious educational programme. There is a five-part classical Indian music introductory course with live demonstrations, starting on September 14. A format called 'In Conversation Session' allows close encounters with some stars of the festival. The foyer will be the place for free concerts with local musicians. And those wanting to relax in between can take part in yoga sessions - accompanied by live music. The breadth and depth of events makes Darbar probably the biggest and most important festival of classical raga music outside India today. There is hope that the raga tradition is not doomed when it is presented so much alive. Apparently it has its own unique charm and value as a refuge and alternative to today's world of commercialisation, digitisation, overstimulation and superficiality.

Programme of 'Water Music: Mother India'.
Program of the Darbar Festival.

6. Jai's Blog - The power of song
- Notes of Jai Uttal -

Jai Uttal, disciple of Neem Karoli Baba and Ali Akbar Khan, is one of the pioneers of kirtan music since the beginning of the 1990s. He has released 18 records and has opened up new horizons in the merging of Indian traditions with Western elements in many of them. In 2002 his album Mondo Rama was the first ever kirtan record to receive a Grammy nomination. His blog lets us partcipipate in his thoughts, feelings and experiences as a musician and a devotee. We would like to share excerpts from his blog in a loose series from now on. More from and about Jai Uttal here.

I must be honest and say that that inner knowledge, that TOTAL belief, seems to wax and wane inside of me. Sometimes as I sing I SOOOOO much feel the presence of Radha and Krishna, or Shiva, or Hanuman, and at other times my songs are taking me deep into the caverns of my own heart, my soul. And you know what? It really doesn’t matter that much to me at all. I understand that my mind is a limited mechanism and that the spirit within can only comprehend the miraculous realm of the spirit.

One time, at our winter Kirtan Camp in Guatemala, a woman said she was having trouble because she was an atheist and we were spending all of our time singing to this blue god and that four-armed goddess. I laughed inwardly and wondered what on Earth she was doing there! But we talked for a while about the practice of Kirtan, how healing it is, how heart expanding and joyful it can be. And I remembered something I had read once in a novel about a rabbi in Israel after World War Two. He simply could not believe in a God who would allow the Holocaust, but he “still believed in the power of prayer”.

In some ways this makes no sense, because who answers the prayers? But on another level it acknowledges an alternate world where our thoughts, conditionings and comprehension are really very small. Beliefs? I suppose they have some value. But for me the heart is much more important. How can I keep my heart open? How can I tell the truth? How can I be a good daddy and a good husband? My guru never demanded that we ‘believe’ anything, just that we “love people and feed them” and always tell the truth. He never gave lectures or discourses but he asked us to give him our anger and to try not to worry, because he would always be with us. And he told us to sing God’s names. And when we were done singing to sing more, and more, and more… Couldn’t be more simple, could it?

7. Workshops - August to October
- Scene Info -

Workshops are a great opportunity of getting fresh inspiration for the study and practice of Indian instruments, Indian music and Indian dance. We support that! Therefore we publish an overview of current workshops regularly. Details of all workshops are available in our website's network section on the workshop page.

05.08. - 08.08. FREIBURG: Kanjira medium with Ganesh Kumar
07.08. - 09.08. BAD MEINBERG: Harmonium learning seminar with Narendra Hübner
07.08. - 09.08. GERODE (Harz Mountains): Nada Yoga - the healing power of sound with Barbara Irmer, Carmen Mager, Frank Beese
09.08. - 14.08. HORUMERSIEL (North Sea): Yoga Mantra holiday week with Sundaram
21.08. - 27.08. WUSTROW (Wendland): Bharatanatyam Summer School with PT Narendran
13.09. BERLIN: Harmonium for beginners with Reina Berger
21.09. - 28.09. GR - KAVALA: Nada Yoga Retreat with Anne-Careen Engel & Birgit Reimer
27.09. - 30.09. OBERLAHR (Westerwald): Harmonium Aufbauseminar with Govinda Roth
01.10. - 04.10. OPFENBACH (Allgäu): Harmonium learning seminar with Gyanaroopa Dickbertel
09.10. - 11.10. WEMMETSWEILER (Saarland): Sitar Intensive - Tanas & Technology in Raga Bihag with Yogendra
09.10. - 11.10. OY-MITTELBERG (Allgäu): Harmonium learning seminar with Jürgen Wade
11.10. BERLIN: Harmonium for beginners with Reina Berger
16.10. - 18.10. OY-MITTELBERG (Allgäu): Harmonium building seminar with Jürgen Wade

8. Concerts - August & September
- Scene Info -

The concert summer this year is marked by festivals in London and Berlin and the tours of Prem Joshua & Band, tabla solo player Samir Chatterjee and Balaji També with his ensemble. Check our concert calendar for more detailed information, venues, times and additional dates in 2015!

06.08. N - HEDALEN: Prem Joshua & Band - World Music
07.08. BERLIN: Shama Rahman - Sitar, Vocal
07.08. BERLIN: Asif Ali Khan & Party - Qawwali Vocal
08.08. BERLIN: Mungal Patasar - Sitar
08.08. BERLIN: Barmer Boys - Qawwali from Rajasthan
08.08. A - BRUNN: Prem Joshua & Band - World Music
09.08. GRÜNBERG / Oberhessen: Indigo Masala - World Music Stories
12.08. I – CASOLE D'ELSE: Prem Joshua & Band - World Music
21.08. STUTTGART: Samir Chatterjee - Tabla Solo
22.08. KARLSRUHE: Samir Chatterjee - Tabla Solo
23.08. KARLSRUHE: Samir Chatterjee - Tabla & Grupa Janke Randalu
24.08. BERLIN: Bhakti Deshpande - Kathak dance
26.08. KREFELD: Prem Joshua & Band - World Music
27.08. COLOGNE: Samir Chatterjee - Tabla Solo
28.08. BERLIN: Samir Chatterjee - Tabla Solo
28.08. COLOGNE: Prem Joshua & Band - World Music
28.08. BONN: Sadanand Naimpalli - Tabla & Pakhawaj
29.08. PL - WROCLAW: Samir Chatterjee - Tabla Solo
30.08. PL – JELENIA GORA: Samir Chatterjee - Tabla Solo
10.09. B - BRUXELLES: Sitardust Quartet
12.09. CH - ZURICH: Balaji També & Ensemble - Healing Sounds from India
13.09. KONSTANZ: Balaji També & Ensemble - Healing Sounds from India
13.09. FRANKFURT: Abhijit Banerjee - Tabla Solo
17.09. REGENSBURG: Pulsar Trio - Sitar, Piano, Drums
17.09. GB - LONDON: Veena D Srinivas - Saraswati Veena / Satyajit Talwalkar - Tabla
18.09. GB - LONDON: Abhisek Lahiri - Sarod / Ranjani & Gayatri - Carnatic Vocals
18.09. WEILBURG: Balaji També & Ensemble - Healing Sounds from India
19.09. BERLIN: Moti Ma, Hari Gopal Dasa, Phull Singh - Kirtan-Concert
19.09. FRANKFURT: Balaji També & Ensemble - Healing Sounds from India
19.09. GB - LONDON: Ronu Majumdar - Bansuri Flute
19.09. GB - LONDON: Pelva Naik - Dhrupad Vocal
19.09. GB - LONDON: Mita Nag - sitar / Jayateerth Mevundi - Khayal Vocal
20.09. KRONBERG: Balaji També & Ensemble - Healing Sounds from India
20.09. GB - LONDON: Bahauddin Dagar - Rudra Veena
20.09. GB - LONDON: Irshad Khan - Surbahar & Sitar / Kaushiki Chakraborty - Khayal Vocal
20.09. GB - LONDON: Seeta Patel - Bharatanatyam Dance
20.09. GB - LONDON: Shivkumar Sharma - Santoor
23.09. HEILBRONN: Balaji També & Ensemble - Healing Sounds from India
24.09. STUTTGART: Balaji També & Ensemble - Healing Sounds from India
26.09. MUNICH: Taj - Indian Music & Dance Show
26.09. CH - GENEVA: Shujaat Khan - Sitar, Vocal
27.09. LEINFELDEN-ECHTERDINGEN: Taj - Indian Music & Dance Show