Three-day city festival honours doyens of Indian classical music

The three-day Swara Samrat Festival, held from Friday to Sunday at Nazrul Mancha, brought together eminent personalities from the world of classical music and dance. Marking its 13th anniversary, the festival—organised by the Shree Ranjani Foundation and led by Padma Shri Pandit Tejendra Narayan Majumdar and his family—paid tribute to the legacy of Swara Samrat Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Spread across three evenings, the festival celebrated India’s rich classical traditions and their continuing relevance, offering a platform for established artistes to present their craft through timeless compositions and forms.The opening ceremony witnessed the presence of luminaries including Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty, Pandit L Subrahmanyam, Kavita Krishnamurti, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and Minister Snehasish Chakraborty, among others. A special homage was paid to the late Ustad Zakir Hussain through performances by Ustad Taufiq Qureshi, Pandit Bikram Ghosh and Pandit Rakesh Chaurasia.Festival highlights included a sitar–sarod duet by Samanyu Sarkar and Abhishek Lahiri, a Kathak–Bharatanatyam collaboration by Pandit Rajendra Gangani and Vidushi Rama Vaidyanathan, and a rare ensemble featuring Kavita Krishnamurti, Odissi dancer Sujata Mohapatra and tabla exponent Tanmoy Bose. The final evening featured Pandit Tejendra Narayan Majumdar on sarod with Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri on tabla, followed by a performance by his students under the guidance of Indrayudh Majumdar.Reflecting on the event, Kavita Krishnamurti said, “Kolkata feels like a holy land to me; I must have been Bengali in a past life.”