Late Night Rāga

LATE NIGHT RĀGA
Hindol Deb (sitār, India), Florian Schiertz (tablā), Peeter Vähi (tānpurā)
Hindustani classical late-evening rāgas Nat Bihag, Jhinjhoti, Kaunsi Kanada, Bengali folk tune Amar Antare Bairagir Lau Baje

Hindol Deb started learning the sitār at the age of five from his father Sri Panchanan Sardar. He also received training from other imminent teachers like Pandit Santosh Bannerji and was later groomed under the tutelage of Pandit Deepak Chowdhury. As one of the Indian music critics wrote in his column: ”Hindol’s performance is marked by a combination of technical finesse and a deep sense of maturity.” His Indian classical renditions are marked by maintaining purity of rāga, aesthetically woven Improvisation with elaborate rhythmic sections. He has toured internationally various countries including the USA, Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Japan, Denmark, and of course India.
With his base in Hindustani classical music, Hindol has been actively involved in combining different other genres exploring the infinite combinations in the crossover of Indian music with various other genres. During his study in the university his interest was drawn towards the Medieval Western music. As a result of that he created two of his own projects – Medieval Raga, with Indian and Eauropean Early Music.
As a dedicated teacher Hindol conducts sitār lessons and workshops of Indian classical music, Improvisation, interpretation of Indian music at different music universities.

Florian Schiertz comes from an artistic background, as both his parents are active in the field of fine arts. At the age of fourteen he started learning drums. In 1988 he was attracted to the tablā through seeing Trilok Gurtu who notated a composition (“Dha te te Dha te te Dha Dha te te Dha ge tu na ka ta”) for him after a concert.
At the age of twenty-one Florian decided to specialise in tabla playing and became a resident student of Udai Mazumdar (himself a pupil of Ashutosh Bhattacharya and Ravi Shankar) in both Basel and Delhi. In addition he commenced studies in tabla and north Indian classical music at the Rotterdam Conservatoire with Ustad Fayaz Khan. In 2000 he completed his teaching diploma and continued as a resident student by means of the traditional guru-shishya-parampara method with Pandit Sumantra Guha in Kolkata, India. 2003 he completed his postgraduate studies in Rotterdam Conservatory (Tablā – Master in music) and started to work as a freelance musician.
Florian Schiertz performed tablā solo concerts in Kolkata, in Hyderabad and in the Drums of India international tablā-festival among many others. The Indian press remarked: “The maestro performed a terrific solo piece”; “… Tabla Vadak holds audience spellbound”; “Soul of music can cross boundaries” (The Hindu), “Tablā is his soul” (The New Indian Express), “One can never master Indian classical music” (Times of India).
He played with ca 50 (!) distinguished Indian classical artists including Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee, Nagaraju Talluri, Neela Bhagwat and Sudeshna Maulik.