Thursday (5/17) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Jason Kehe reports from Delhi, India, “When Gavin Martin and his family moved here from southern India in the early ’70s, the country’s capital city offered the gifted young pianist exactly one option for continuing his music education: the Delhi School of Music. It was the only place in town—perhaps in the whole of northern India—that taught Western classical music with any degree of competence. Even so, life wasn’t easy for the serious student born in a country where the sitar is king. … Today, the Delhi School of Music still calls itself—in its pamphlets, fliers and website—‘the only institution of its kind in northern India.’ But that might finally be changing. ‘Perhaps in a year or two, we will not be able to say that,’ admits Surojit Banerjee, a 50-year veteran of the Delhi Music Society, the nonprofit organization that oversees the administration of the school.’ The Delhi School of Music was formed in 1966 by the Delhi Music Society. ‘It started small, but a series of eminent directors contributed to its growth, culminating in H.P. Palamkote, the ‘grand authority on classical music in New Delhi,’ Martin says. Martin, who now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, L.A. Philharmonic keyboardist Joanne Pearce Martin, was one of Palamkote’s students.”
Posted May 21, 2012
