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Alliance Française de Delhi in collaboration with IIT Delhi invites you for a classical music concert ‘Touring the land by Duo Azarak ft. Mohit Chhabra’.
Date: 10th March 2023
Time: 4:30 pm
Venue: Seminar Hall, IIT Delhi
[su_heading size=”16″ align=”left” margin=”10″]ABOUT TOURING THE LAND [/su_heading]
Alexandre Jurain was born in a village in Champagne, France surrounded by forests and ponds. Passionate about nature and music, he learnt the piano, discovers jazz, and listen to Bach, John Coltrane, Keith Jarreth, Magma, Bartok and Stravinsky. Increasingly interested in Hindustani classical music, he arrived in Shantiniketan as an ICCR scholarship awardee, at the end of 2000 and met his master Sri Abir Singh Khangura, a fantastic musician playing one of the rarest stringed instruments in the world, the ESRAJ. Today Alexandre is one of the rare exponents of Esraj solo in Dhrupad form, the most rigorous school of Indian classical music.
The 300-years-old esraj is a bowed stringed instrument which is a combination between sarangi and sitar. The base of the instrument is like sarangi while the neck and strings are like sitar. The base of the instrument is like sarangi while the neck and strings are like sitar.
It is at Shantiniketan, that he met Sukanta Bose, who became his companion, in life and in music. Born in Chandernagor, Westbengal, her parents, passionate singers, introduced her from a very young age to Indian classical music and to the interpretation of Rabindra Sangeet. While studying painting at the University of Shantiniketan, created by Tagore in the early 20th century, Sukanta Bose took singing lessons from two masters, Vikram Singh and Mohan Singh.
Alexandre and Sukanta Bose compose the duet Azarak experimenting new forms of expressions, as well as diving into the timeless repertoire of poets Lalon Fakir and Rabindranath Tagore. The language of Azarak is an imaginary language, which dreams of itself the voice of nature. This repertoire is at the confluence of western and indian classical music with Celtic or tribal reminiscences, and opens up to wandering in a primeval world, honouring nature as the only goddess.