A total of 85 Bangladeshi artists will perform at the Bengal Classical Music Festival Bangladesh 2014 which will be held from November 27 to December 1 at the capital’s Army Stadium.
Twenty-six of them will perform in the prime classical music section with the help of 19 others, while 40 artists will join in a chorus to be featured on both the opening and concluding days.
The year’s festival, in line with its previous two seasons, will present a broad variety of classical music genres and dance forms by 160 performers from India and Bangladesh.
The number of Bangladeshi artists was increased this year. In this regard, the director-general of Bengal Foundation, Luva Nahid Choudhury, said, “We’ve got more homegrown talents lined up for this year’s festival than we could in the previous years. This is going to be exciting!”
The organisers briefed journalists on the latest developments about the festival at a press conference in the capital yesterday.
Bengal Foundation is going to organise the third season of the festival which is already being credited in some quarters as the world’s largest classical music festival in terms of the number of attendees.
Each day of the five-day festival will contain 11 hours of musical and dance performance.
Bidushi Kishori Amonkar, the classical music icon of the subcontinent who performs in the classical genre ‘khyal’ and the light classical genres thumri and bhajan, will join the performing line for the first time. Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan will also perform at the fest.
Other notable artists from India, who will perform for the first time in the festival, are Malavika Sarukkai (bharatanatyam dancer), Karaikudi Mani (percussionist adept in mridangam), Umakant Gundecha and Ramakant Gundecha (dagarvani dhrupad singers), Manjusha Patil (khyal), Kushal Das (sitar and surbahar), Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangas (sarod), Ganesh Rajagopalan (violin), Ashwini Bhide Deshpande (khyal) and others.
Artists who are going to make repeat appearance on the festival include Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan (sitar), Bidushi Girija Devi (khyal and thumri), Pandit Shivkumar Sharma (santoor), Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia (flaut), Pandit Rajan and Sajan Mishra (khyal), Pandit Tejendra Narayan Majumdar (sarod), Tejendra Narayan Majumdar (sarod), Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar (classical vocalist), Bidushi Aruna Sairam (Carnatic music vocalist), Vishal Krishna (kathak), Koushik Chakraborty (khayal) and others.
The opening and concluding days’ sessions of the festival will highlight long-held traditions of Bangla music and feature chorus by forty prominent singers from Bangladesh, such as Iffat Ara Dewan, Rezwana Choudhury Bannya, Mita Haque, Laisa Ahmed Lisa, Aditi Mohsin, Khairul Anam Shakil, Bulbul Islam, Subir Nandi and others.
Registration for participation in the fest will start from early November. The festival is being presented by Square Group and supported by Brac Bank.