The New York Times, Tuesday, November 13, 1985
The world Music Institute and New Audiences presented the Indian
sitarist Nikhil Banerjee and a troupe of seven professional folk
musicians from the Thar Desert of Northwest India at Carnegie
Hall on Saturday,providing an inspired evening of music. It is
difficult to imagine any better-known Indian performers presenting
a program more vital, kaleidoscopic and moving than this one.
Nikhil Banerjee, following this intensely upbeat opening with
a classical raga, proved himself a master of the sitar. His long,
gorgeous alap, the meditative exposition of the raga, demonstrated
that in the proper hands, the sitar can be as subtle and deeply
moving an instrument as the veena, its extremely ancient ancestor.
And later, as he played cat-and-mouse with the virtuosic tabla
drummer Zakir Hussain, the extraordinary fluidity and assurance
of his rhythmic ideas and phrasing set a pace and a standard that
would have left most of the international 'stars' of Indian music
far behind.
© 1986 The New York Times Company
Reviews
Nikhil Banerjee
