Hindustani Airs: Bridging Cultures Through Music
Vocalists Sherezade Panthaki, Ria Modak, and Ahona Palchoudhuri, along with musician Jeffrey Grossman, explore the hybrid musical culture of India and the West through a performance of Indian songs and melodies transcribed by Sophia Plowden, the British wife of an East India Company official who lived in Lucknow, India, from 1777 to 1790.
About this program
Paralleling the hybrid visual cultures illuminated in the exhibition Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company 1750–1850, this concert explores the fusion of Hindustani and Western music in the late 1700s. Vocalists demonstrate songs in their original Hindustani form as well as the westernized versions of Indian songs and melodies that Sophia Plowden, a British woman living in Lucknow while her husband was an East India Company official, heard at nautches (Indian dances) and transcribed for Western listeners.
After the performances, join the participants in a conversation about the intricacies of ornamentation in Western and Hindustani music and Plowden’s fascination with the musical culture of India. Moderated by Holly Shaffer, Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Brown University.
About Sherezade Panthaki
Sherezade Panthaki, soprano, performs internationally with conductors Nicholas McGegan, Masaaki Suzuki, Mark Morris, and others. Combining a passion for historically informed performance practice with stylish creativity, she is known for her sensitive interpretations of Bach and Handel, as well as numerous modern world premieres. Recent engagements include early music and oratorio performances with the New York Philharmonic, Bach Collegium Japan, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Born and raised in India, she holds graduate degrees from the Yale School of Music and the University of Illinois. She is a founding member of the Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, presenting vocal excellence alongside arts education and social justice.
About Ria Modak
Ria Modak is a historian, guitarist, and translator from New York. A recent graduate of the dual degree program between Harvard College and the New England Conservatory, she is currently a PhD student at Brown University, where she works on language movements and cultural politics in Western India. She has worked with musicians Ali Sethi, Paquito D’Rivera, and Vijay Iyer and has collaborated on interdisciplinary projects with the artists Shahzia Sikander and Aiza Ahmed. She has performed with the New York Kathak Festival.
About Ahona Palchoudhuri
Ahona Palchoudhuri is a PhD candidate in anthropology and ethnomusicology at Brown University. Her current project looks at seasonality, ritual, and forms of musical performance in rural West Bengal. Ahona uses the Indian classical monsoon raag Malhar to examine the ways in which sound and rain attune to one another in everyday life. She received her BA in English literature from Delhi University and an MSc in social anthropology at the London School of Economics.
About Jeffrey Grossman
Keyboardist and conductor Jeffrey Grossman specializes in historically informed performances. As the artistic director of the acclaimed baroque ensemble the Sebastians, Grossman has directed concerts including Bach’s St. John and St. Matthew Passions and Handel’s Messiah from the organ and harpsichord, in collaboration with Tenet Vocal Artists. Recent seasons include his conducting operas of Haydn and Handel with Juilliard Opera, leading Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with the Green Mountain Project in New York and Venice, and conducting a workshop of a new Vivaldi opera for the Metropolitan Opera. He holds degrees from Harvard College, the Juilliard School, and Carnegie Mellon University. He teaches performance practice at Yale University.
About Holly Shaffer
Holly Shaffer’s research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century arts in Britain and South Asia, and their intersections through empire. Her book, Grafted Arts: Art Making and Taking in the Struggle for Western India, 1760–1910 (2022), was awarded the Edward C. Dimock Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities and a Historians of British Art Book Prize. In 2011, she curated Adapting the Eye: An Archive of the British in India, 1770–1830 at the Yale Center for British Art. She is cocurator of Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850.
This program is presented through the generosity of the Terry F. Green 1969 Fund for British Art and Culture.
