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We gratefully acknowledge support over the years
from all of you who attended concerts regularly
and from the following foundations:

Zellerbach Family Foundation
Alliance for California Traditional Arts
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
The San Francisco Foundation
South Asian Giving Circle
LEF Foundation
WESTAF
AAPIP

Concert Series

Carnatic Vocal Concert
with Anirudh Venkatesh

Saturday Evening
May 12th, 7pm at the
Subterranean Arthouse

Anirudh Venkatesh - voice
Lakshmi Balasubramanya - violin
Vignesh Venkataraman - mridangam

Anirudh Venkatesh went, sang, and won awards both at the Madras Music Academy, and at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana, which have become like the Carnegie Hall and the Outside Lands of South Indian classical music. He is currently guided by two gurus, both of whom are direct disciples of the legendary carnatic singer Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer - P. S. Narayanaswamy, and Palai C. K. Ramachandran. He has also learned from Seetharama Sharma and Sugandha Kalamegham, and his earliest teacher, from whom he continues to learn, is Padma Kutty, from whom he began learning at five years old. Anirudh is now a student at Stanford University, and at this concert, you'll get to see (and hear) him without a microphone! (Incidentally, this photograph was taken by Bharat Sundar, winner of the original Carnatic Idol televised tournament.)

Sitar Concert
with Antar Richard Garneau

Saturday Evening
May 26th, 7pm at the
Subterranean Arthouse

Sitarist Antar Richard Garneau has performed internationally in India and Europe, as well as closer to home, with appearances over the years, among others, at the Old First Church and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco - unamplified concerts these. Antar learned sitar directly from Nikhil Banerjee, as well as being a long-time disciple of Ali Akbar Khan, and served as an instructor of sitar at the Ali Akbar College of Music. With a masters degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Hawaii, Antar served as a lecturer there, and as a sitar instructor at UCLA also. The Times of India says of his playing, "Deep expressive aalap, a command over tempo or laya, as well as rhythm, creation of music with a highly intricate structure of notes - following all the rules and regulations of a raag and yet retaining its beauty are a few of Richard Garneau's specialties."

Carnatic Saxophone Concert
with Prasant Radhakrishnan

Saturday Evening
June 9th, 7pm at the
Subterranean Arthouse

Firmly rooted in tradition, Prasant Radhakrishnan's subtle, fluid style is a formidable voice in carnatic music. The unique vocal texture of his sound on saxophone, noted for its expressive complexity and rhythmic ingenuity, reflects Prasant's continued study, constant innovation, and vast concert experience in India, as well as extensive appearances closer to home. For the past many years, Prasant has been an Oakland resident, delivering excellent concerts of South Indian classical music, as well as leading one of the most legit carnatic jazz groups in the world - VidyA. Prasant was one of the first performing artists-in-residence at the Red Poppy Art House in SF, and has received commissions to create original work from the de Young Museum and the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

Hindustani Vocal Concert
with Gaayatri Kaundinya

Sunday Evening
June 17th, 7pm at the
Subterranean Arthouse

Gaayatri Kaundinya is one among relatively few vocalists who trained extensively with Ali Akbar Khan, and sings in the Baba Allaudin Maihar-Senia "gharana" ("house" or "school" or "style"). She has given multiple performances as part of the San Francisco World Music Festival, on KPFA radio in Berkeley, and once was featured during the "Amma" Mata Amritanandamayi fundraiser during the tsunami relief effort in 2004. In 2010 she went on a concert tour of India, on the final wishes of her guru, performing in Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Visakhapatnam. Recently, with the permission, and blessings of Annapurna Devi, reclusive surbahar musician and sister of Ali Akbar Khan, she spent time at the Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata studying under the accomplished vocalist Ulhas Kashalkar, refining her training as a vocalist.

Gautam Sings.

Friday Evening
June 29th, 8pm at the
Subterranean Arthouse

Gautam Tejas Ganeshan - song
Rohan Krishnamurthy - mridangam

Gautam runs the Sangati Center, so you've probably met him at a concert. He has sung what he hopes was good, interesting, sincere music at many of the East Bay's venues for traditional music - the Julia Morgan Theater, the new Freight & Salvage, Ashkenaz, and of course the Subterranean Arthouse. In SF, his appearances include the SF International Arts Festival and the SFJazz SummerFest. He has guest taught Carnatic music for the Music of India courses at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and has conducted workshops on singing and the aesthetics of Indian classical music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at the Asian Art Museum (SF). Incidentally, don't worry about all this, just come to the performance.

Tabla and Mridangam
with Sameer Gupta and
Rohan Krishnamurthy

Sunday Early Evening
July 1st 6pm at the
Subterranean Arthouse

Sameer Gupta - tabla
Rohan Krishnamurthy - mridangam

A special double drum solo performance with Sameer Gupta and Rohan Krishnamurthy. These two have distinguished themselves with classical fidelity while having many irons in the fire. Sameer's multidimensional percussive self appears all over the world - recently at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the Kennedy Center in DC, among countless others. As a tabla artist, Sameer performs as a classical soloist and accompanist, leads his own innovative working ensemble called NAMASKAR, and has given instruction on classical Indian music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Sameer continues to studies with tabla maestro Anindo Chatterjee in Kolkata

Rohan has performed in hundreds of concerts in North America since the age of nine with a generation of Carnatic musicians, including T.N. Krishnan, T.N. Seshagopalan, and Chitravina Ravikiran, among countless others. His diverse application of his traditional training, which began over the telephone and continued eventually with mridangam maestro Guruvayur Dorai, was acclaimed by USA Today in describing him as an "international performer" on mridangam. Rohan has spearheaded numerous cross-musical ventures with symphony orchestras, jazz ensembles, and eminent musicians such as Grammy winners Anoushka Shankar, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and Glen Velez. He has performed one-on-one for the President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, and is a fellow at the Eastman School of Music, pursuing a doctorate in ethnomusicology.

about the sangati center

The Sangati Center has hosted over 300 public chamber concerts of Indian classical music.

Founded in 2006 by Gautam Tejas Ganeshan, the Sangati Center has brought together hundreds of artists and thousands of listeners in a six-year-long concert series.

All concerts have been presented strictly acoustically, with humans rather than electricity responsible for the sound. Admission has always been on a sliding-scale, with nobody turned away for lack of funds. Concerts have tended to attract between 15 - 40 listeners.

The word sangati in Sanskrit means "going together", as opposed to sangita, which many people mistake as our name, understandably, and which means "singing together", and is also a general word for music. Sangati also has a special musical meaning - it is the principle of development whereby a melody evolves by iteration.

["mission greenbelt" sidewalk garden]

[ arjun verma at subterranean 4.14.12 ]	[ ananya ashok at subterranean 4.28.12 ]
[ warren senders at subterranean 1.20.12 ]	[ sumithra vasudev at subterranean 3.17.12 ]
[ prasant radhakrishnan at subterranean 11.19.11 ]	[ kalambur brothers at subterranean 12.17.11 ]
[ mohan rangan govindaraj at subterranean 9.17.11 ]	[ mallar bhattacharya at subterranean 10.8.11 ]
[ mahesh kale 6.16.07 ]	[ mahesh kale 6.16.07 ]
[ prateek haldar @ sitarfest 4.18.10 ]	[ prateek haldar @ sitarfest 4.18.10 ]
[ michael lewis @ haiti benefit 1.20.10 ]	[ jody stecher 2.13.10 ]
[ srivani jade 1.24.09 ]	[ matthew rahaim 7.5.09 ]
[ karthik lakshminarayanan 2.21.09 ]	[ partha bose 11.13.09 ]
[ bharatanatyam workshop with shyamala 5.25.08 ]	[ partha bose 11.13.09 ]
[ ashok maitra @ tablacentric 11.2.08 ]	[ indranil mallick 11.15.09 ]
[ group tabla class ]	[ ICM for children with robin sukhadia 1.23.10 ]
[ srinivas reddy @ sangati SF opening 2.4.07 ]	[ shahid parvez 4.27.07]
[ audience 4.5.08 ]	[ audience 4.18.10 ]
[ first concert @ sangati opening 4.22.06 ]	[ old sangati center! ]