Slide guitarist to take city by storm

Award-winner and Grammy nominee Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, a slide guitar player, and his band members from Calcutta Chronicles have collaborated with 40 musicians of international repute that include Antoine Morineau and Colin Bass.
In their debut album Beyond the Ragasphere, the band collaborated with John McLaughlin, Jerry Douglas and Jeff Sipe.
Ask him about his experience of working with international artists, and he says, “Working with musicians from across the globe has always been an enriching experience for us. Our compositions for fusion music are essentially rooted in Indian classical music. Our band members are trained in jazz, Hawaiian, Latin and Indian folk music, among others.”
The Kolkata-based musician, whose family has been practicing classical music for eight generations, took up slide guitar when he was five years old. “All my family members are essentially singers. However, I took a fancy to slide guitar after I discovered my father's friend's slide guitar which was temporarily kept in our house. I have been playing it since and singing as well,” he says.
The 51-year-old musician has invented his own slide-guitars that are unique to his compositions — he calls them the trinity of guitars. These hollow-neck instruments are Chaturangui, Gandharvi and Anandi.
Ahead of his performance in Bangalore, the musician says, “I love Bangalore and have performed in the city several times. The crowd here is receptive to classical music and I am looking forward to the show here.”