Swapan Chaudhuri

Indian tabla player, born in 1945. Swapan's tabla training began when he was five years old under Pandit Santosh Krishna Biswas, an eminent exponent of the Lucknow Gharana. By the time he was ten, [a319702] was inviting Swapan to the Ali Akbar College which he had recently opened in Calcutta – a precursor to the college [a319702] would open in the US fourteen years later. Later Swapan studied economics and graduated from Jadavpur University. In 1969 he played with [a319702] at the Tansen Music Conference and decided after the great success to become a professional musician. In the past decades he performed i.e. with Pandit [a299241], Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, [a561095] and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. Swapan Chaudhuri is Director of Percussion at the Ali Akbar College of Music (AACM) in San Rafael, California where he started teaching in 1981 and Chairperson for the World Music Programme at the California Institute of Performing Arts in L.A.