March 10, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—A semester-long festival of Indian music at Amherst College continues on Friday, March 31, at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall with a performance of North Indian music. The concert features Peter Row on rudra vina and sitar with tabla accompaniment by Nitin Mitta. The evening will open and conclude with presentations of modern Hindustani music, while the centerpiece of the concert will be a solo on rudra vina in the binkar performance style that reached its apogee during the Mughal period (1556-1858). Nowadays, performances on the rudra vina are extremely rare, even in India.
A performer on sitar and rudra vina, Peter Row is a member of the faculty of New England Conservatory, where he served as dean (1983-1990) and provost (1990-1996 and 2000-04). Row studied sitar and rudra vina in Kolkata, India (from 1965 to 1973) with Pandit Gokul Nag of the Vishnupur Gharana and obtained the B. Music, M. Music and Doctor of Music (Sangitacharya) degrees from the Prayag Sangit Samiti in Allahabad, India. Peter has performed in concert throughout North America and India and has made numerous radio and television appearances. A former president of the Northeast Chapter of the Society of Ethnomusicology, he is widely published and has lectured about Indian music across the U.S. He was the recipient of a JDR Fund Fellowship for doctoral studies in India.
Most recently Row has performed sitar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and on rudra vina at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Nitin Mitta, born in Hyderabad, India, now makes his home in New York City. He is one of the most prominent tabla players of the younger generation and has performed with a number of major soloists, including Pandit Jasraj, Prabha Atre, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Buddhaditya Mukherjee. He is the student of Pandit Arvind Mulgaonkar, who studied with the legendary tabla maestro the late Ustad Amir Hussain Khan of the Farukhabad Gharana.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Amherst College Concert Office at 413/542-2195, or e-mail concert manager Kevin Daly at kpdaly@amherst.edu.
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