Biography

Kartik Seshadri is a world-renowned force in the field of Indian Classical Music. As a sitarist, he attracted widespread attention when he began performing full-length solos at the age of 6 in India. The sitar prodigy has blossomed in to an “amazingly accomplished” musical powerhouse noted for his music’s expressive beauty, rich tonal sensibility, and rhythmic intricacy, praised the Washington Post. The prestigious British magazine Songlines declared, Seshadri “stands out amongst sitarists for his clarity and intricate rhythmic sensibility.” The publication selected the sitar guru’s 2004 Raga: Rasa – That Which Colors the Mind album for its World Music Top 10 list and cited his 2006 Illuminations record as “sitar at its lyrical best.”

A multifarious confluence of musical influences, Seshadri has trained and toured worldwide with Grammy-winning composer and sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar and is considered as his foremost protege. In 2005 (and for the upcoming 2010 season), Seshadri collaborated with prominent composer Philip Glass and the Brazilian instrumental group UAKTI on the critically acclaimed Orion project. Seshadri performs extensively in his homeland and around the world, including the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, Mexico and the Middle East. He has played at prestigious venues and events ranging from Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia, the Brighton Festival in U.K., the Ravinia Festival, the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City to the Dover Lane, ITC, Gunidas and Saptak Sammelans in India to name but a few.

Mr Seshadri is also a distinguished composer and educator of Indian Classical Music. While his Quartet for a Raga was premiered under the auspices of the Contemporary Music Forum in Washington D.C., his latest “Concerto #1 for Sitar and Chamber Orchestra” received its world premier last October in San Diego.

As an educator Seshadri heads one of the largest programs of Indian Classical Music in the USA at the University of California, San Diego. He has been invited as a distinguished guest faculty member at various conservatories and universities around the world: the Banff Center in Canada, Stanford University to the Yehudi Menuhin Shool of Music in Bath, U.K. In 2009 Seshadri launched extemp . . . his academy for Indian Classical music.