NYC Radio Live

Ashvin Bhogendra (vocal),  Arun Ramamurthy (violin),  Akshay Anantapadmanabhan (mrigdanam). 9-1opm during our 24 hour Ragas Live Festival. Ashvin Bhogendra (D.B. Ashvin) hails from a family of musicians. His maternal grandfather Kalaimamani Late Shri T.K.Rangachary is one of the doyens of Carnatic Music and his paternal great-grandfather Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharlu is one of the greatest playw...

Anjana Roy (sitar), Sanjay Ranjan Pal (tabla) 4am-5am during our 24 hour Ragas Live Festival Anjana Roy had her early education in music from her father Shri Rebati Ranjan Debnath, who was a senior disciple of Ustad Allauddin Khan of Maihar. She later had training from several other masters , including Professor erma of Jaipur, Pandit Debu Chowdhury of Delhi, and Pandit Manilal Nag of Calcutta.

Andrew Mendelson (Sitar),  Ehren Hanson (Tabla) 7-8PM During our ragas live festival Counter to the ancient tenets of reincarnation, Andrew Mendelson attempts to live as many lives as possible simultaneously in the present. A devout student of Indian classical music, Andrew has been playing and studying the sitar for over 15 years. In 2005, Andrew won the grand championship gold medal at the Darsh...

A Tabla/Mridangam duet with Anirban Roy Chowdhury (Tabla) and Akshay Anantapadmanabhan (Mridangam) / with Indrajit Roy Chowdhury keeping time on the Sitar. 5-6am during our 24 Hour Ragas Live Festival.     Anirban Roy Chowdhury, born in a musical family in Assam, India, is an able young representative of the Punjab gharana of tabla. Anirban's tutelage started at a very young age from his father Ak...

Achyut Joshi, vocal; Stephen Cellucci, tabla;  Andrew Shantz, harmonium. From our 24 Ragas Live festival Achyut Joshi is a young emerging Hindustani vocalist.  Born in India and raised in New York, Achyut began studying with Shiv Shankar Pandey, of the Kirana Gharana, in Jaipur.  In 2005, he received a US Fulbright Scholarship to study vocal music in Pune with Raghunandan Panshikar, foremost disci...

Steve Gorn - Bansuri;  Naren Budhakar - Tabla Of all the Westerners who have approached Indian Raga, Steve Gorn has be considered to be the ones who has accomplished the most. We were very thankful he joined us for the raga festival. Naren is a wonderful, versatile tabla player who has played with Shahid Parvez and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on our show. Here's his bio from website: Steve Gorn is creating...

Snehasish Mozumder (Mandolin), Nitin Mitta (Tabla) 2 pm - 4 pm from our 24 hour Ragas Live Festival. In accordance with his family tradition, Snehasish Mozumder, born in 1967, started playing the tabla at the age of 4; first playfully, later conscientiously, he learned from his grandfather, Bibhuti Ranjan Mozumder until the age of 14. At the age of 10 (in keeping with family tradition), the mandol...

Ehren Hanson (Tabla),  Sameer Gupta (Tabla), Andrew Shantz (Harmonium). 1 am - 2 am from our Ragas Live Festival. Ehren Hanson has been playing tabla for over 17 years.   A disciple of the great Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, he is an active performer as both a soloist and an accompanist.  His recent review in the "Times of India," Kolkata called his solo performace "enthralling." Sameer Gupta is an or...

Neel Murgai (sitar), Sameer Gupta (tabla) 12-1 am from our Ragas Live Festival. Neel Murgai is a multi-instrumental performer, composer and teacher from New York City. He is a graduate of Goddard College's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program. His life long journey into the depth and beauty of sitar and Indian classical music began with Ravindra Goswami in Banaras, 16 years ago. For the past 10 y...

Dave Eggar is a cello virtuoso and one of our most frequent guests at WKCR -  I am posting this short podcast up now because he'll be performing live today 6-9pm on May 2, 2012! A prodigy, he first played with Metropolitan Opera at the age of 7.  He is not limited by genres, his latest album, Kingston Morning features legend of bluegrass Ralph Stanley, and reggae legends Sly and Robbie and Luciano...

On Feb 5, 2012, Kaleidhaphonic treated the WKCR FM-NY listening audience to a live performance.  It was a magical evening.  Kaleidhaphonic is Kevin Nathaniel Hylton - Mbira, Rattles, Shakere Tripp Dudley - Tabla Salieu Suso - Kora John Ragusa - Flutes, Conch Shell

Originally broadcast live on WKCR radio in NYC, this podcast features live performance and interview with Karavika. Karavika was formed by violinist Trina Basu and cellist Amali Premawardhana who created a sound that combines their love of the music from the golden age of Bollywood, Indian and Western classical traditions and improvisation.  They perform live and are joined by bassist Perry Wortma...

Abdoulaye Diabate from Mali has been called the greatest griot singer living in the United States. We recorded this duo track in my studio this year and I thought that rather than selling it, I'd like to share it as a holiday gift to show appreciation to current and future friends who have been enjoying this podcast, Acoustic Mandala Project, or life in general.   On this track, Abdoulaye plays rh...

Cosmas Magya is a master of the Mbira ( a type of thumb piano) from the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe.  Here he performs and explains the way the instrument is used in ceremonies to contact ancestors.  We'll also hear a track he recorded with another powerful Mbira player and vocalist Beauler Dyoko.

Oran Etkin is a Grammy Nominated clarinetist and saxophone player, who has been making waves with his band Kelenia which combines his love of jazz and the music of West Africa.  Featured in this live performance is Lionel Loueke of Benin, West Africa, one of the most exciting jazz musicians today.  He's been playing with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and coming out with amazing albums for Blue...

Famoro Dioubate is a master of the balafon from Guniea, West Africa.  He performs live on the radio with Yacouba Cissoko on kora, Raul Rothblatt on cello and Sean Dixon on drums.  We also hear him with his full ensemble Kakande.  Famoro is djele, or griot, and his family have been an unbroken chain of musician/historians for almost 800 years.

A live set from the David Rogers and Kairos, an all-star band featuring Kenny Wessel, guitar; Sylvain Leroux, flutes, Matt Pavolka, Bass and Rob Garcia on Drums recorded a couple months ago at WKCR.   Also a live recording from the Bernard Woma Ensemble on Jumbie Records.  David Rogers is an artist who lived and studied in West Africa for many years and his music is deeply informed by those groove...

This week on WKCR we had an exciting live performance from the Arun Ramamurthy Quartet who combine traditional Carnatic (South Indian) music with some Western instruments like the drum kit and the double bass. Arun Ramamurthy, violin; Perry Wortman, bass; Akshay Anantapadmanabhan, mridangam; Sameer Gupta, drums Arun performs Carnatic music at the Cornelia Street Cafe on the fourth Sunday of every...

Thomas Mapfumo, of Zimbabwe, is a revolutionary musician in every sense of the word.  Musically, his band was one of the first to experiment with combining the mbira (thumb piano) and electric guitars and he was the first to put his own lyrics to traditional Shona melodies.  Politically,  these songs became the anthems of the freedom fighters during White minority rule. When the revolution succeed...

A couple recordings I made with a mini-disc recorder in Independent Samoa in 2002 0r 2003.  Every Samoan can sing, if you started to sing a song on a public bus everyone would join you.  The houses have thatched roofs and walls of woven leaves that are folded up during the daytime so the breeze sweeps through.   Here are some pics: the father and son are from the Falonga Bay village in Upolo, wher...

Brandon Terzic's Xalam Project and Negar Bouban This special show features an Oud Virtuoso from Tehran, Negar Bouban, and an Oud Virtuoso based in New York, Brandon Terzic. They met and played together for the first time live on the air for this show.  Brandon also brought his amazing band, Xalam Project.      Xalam's line-up that evening was Luke Notary and Matt Kilmer on Percussion, Matt Darriau...

Kojiro Umezaki - Shakuhachi- Live Performance and Interview This podcast features live performances and interview with Kojiro Umezaki, who plays the Japanese Zen instrument, the shakuhachi, a bamboo flute.  While Kojiro performs the instrument traditionally, he is also experimenting with some new directions in music. Kojiro designs computer programs so that during performances the programs will ge...

Live Performance from the Source featuring Abdoulaye Diabate, plus a demonstration of the fula flute and interview with the founder of the Source, Sylvain Leroux. This episode features a demonstration of one of the signature techniques of the Fula Flute by Sylvain Leroux and a live performance recorded at the Zinc Bar by Erik Gunderson and originally aired on WKCR when Sylvain was my guest. The li...

Live performance and interview from Adam Rudolph. Adam Rudolph is a master percussionist,  pioneer of world music, and creative music visionary.  He came to the radio station to celebrate the release of his new album Both/And by his group Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures with the Organic Orchestra Strings.  He also was kind enough to share an exclusive perfomance recorded live by Moving Pictures at...

This podcast is a beautiful live performance by Srinivas Reddy and Sameer Gupta when they came to the studio to celebrate the release of their album Hemant and Jog in December of '08. Sameer, who is great tabla player and jazz drummer, has recently released an amazing album on Motema called Namaskar. The lineup includes jazz musicians like pianist Mark Cary, who co-produced the album, and maestros...