Siddhartha Roy Chowdhury was born in a musical family. His father, Sangeetacharya Anil Roy Chowdhury was an eminent sarod player and one of the renowned teachers of Indian Classical Instrumental Music in West Bengal.
Endowed with heredity and environment and inspired by his mother, Siddhartha’s training in sitar and sarod commenced under his father and sarod maestro Pt Radhika Mohan Maitra and tabla under Shri Samar Banerjee, a disciple of Pt Jnan Prakash Ghosh and Ustad Shaukat Ali Khan “the wizard of tabla”. He also took lessons from Sangeetacharya Ajoy Sinha Roy.
Since he was 12 years old, Siddhartha came into close contact with the sarod maestro Pt Radhika Mohan Maitra, who was also his father’s Guru and who took up the responsibility of Siddhartha’s musical learning right at the beginning and from him he has learned many common and uncommon intricacies of Indian classical music.
Siddhartha has established himself as a composer, accompanist as well as a soloist in the minds of Indian classical music lovers in India and abroad. As a teacher he has earned respect among his numerous tabla, sitar and sarod students all over the world. His students are nurtured with love and care and they share a unique guru-shishya relationship in a spirit which is a blend of the traditional rigour and the modern friendly informality. Sri Roy Chowdhury is one of the few teachers of his generation who has simultaneously made exceptionally good students, well accepted by music lovers, in the fields of sitar, sarod and tabla. Siddhartha has been teaching since 1997 at Vistar (established in memory of his father) and he also teaches at Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture, Kolkata, since 2001.
His good students include the brilliant sarod player Ms. Rajrupa Chaudhury [who is currently learning with Pandit Sanjoy Bandopadhyay]
and Soumitra Dasgupta the tabla player who was graded ‘A’ by the All India Radio on single audition.
This very rarely happens that a musician is put to ‘A’ grade directly.
Malkauns by Rajrupa
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Apart from several appearances in Kolkata, on TV and radio, and many appearance all over India, Siddhartha has also travelled internationally as a soloist and accompanist, most recently to Australia in 2010. As a member of the Government of India Cultural Delegation he visited the Philippines and Hong Kong in 1980 with Pt Radhika Mohan Maitra.
In 1981 and 1982 he visited Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, USSR. He visited the UK in 1997, the USA in 1995 and 1997. During these tours he gave lectures and demonstrations at various schools and universities.
Siddhartha’s compositions and performances have been widely acclaimed by audiences and press in India and internationally. He took a Classical Orchestra comprised of his students to the USA where they participated in the 15th North Amercian Bengali Conference in New York (1995) and the 17th North Amercian Bengali Conference in Philadelphia (1997).
Siddhartha continues to teach a growing group of students from early ages and tours with them as part of the orchestra.
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