The young ones blaze a trail

Ebadul Haque Shaikat playing sitar at the programme

The soiree featured renditions of classical music by two students of Parampara and sitar and tabla recitals by three Bengal Foundation scholars.

Luva Nahid Chowdhury, Managing Director of Bengal Foundation, introduced the artistes and said, "For the last few years the Foundation has sought to promote authentic Indian classical music, as for instance among the students of Parampara. On the other hand from 1991 onwards, the Foundation has begun giving scholarships to the talented students so that they can further learn music from established gurus. Our first scholar was Rezwana Chowdhury Bonnya and at this moment 13 talented music students are availing this scholarship under different gurus.

The programme started with the rendition of evening raga Imon by Sushmita Debnath Suchi, a Parampara student and a disciple of Tapan Bhattacharya. Her charming rendition of the raga even impressed personalities such as Wahidul Haq and Ustad Mashkur Ali Khan, who were present there to enjoy the renditions of classical music by the young musical talents.

Next came Subir Chandra Ghosh, a Bengal Foundation Scholar who is currently taking lessons from Anup Chatterjee of (Kolkata). Subir played the surwat, kaida, and tukra in teen taal on tabla.

Anika Mobin Ahmed, another Parampara student and disciple of Abdul Mannan, rendered raga Bageshri --to the delight of the audience.

A tabla player from Rajshahi, Swaroop Hossain, who is recently training under Pundit Sudhir Kumar Saxena at Baroda, is another Bengal Foundation scholar. His graceful style of playing the tabla and the recital of teen taal, sometimes with peshkar, chakradar, tukra and kaida, was highly appreciated.

The last attraction was the melodious tunes of sitar by Ebadul Haque Shaikat, who got a scholarship to train under Pundit Deepak Chowdhury of Kolkata. His recital of raga Behag, beginning with alap, then going on to jor alap and ending with jhala, was the perfect conclusion to a fascinating musical soiree.