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Biography

Pandit Sanjoy Bandopadhyay, one of the outstanding sitar players of the current generation, is the Chair Professor, Ustad Allauddin Khan Chair of the Department of Instrumental Music of Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata [India]. He is also functioning as the Director, S.M. Tagore Centre of Documentation & Research of Languishing & Obsolescent Musical Instruments at the same university.
He has performed in a number of major music festivals in India, in the European countries, in North America [USA and Canada] and in Africa [Mauritius and South Africa]. His sitar performances received high acclaim from the music lovers and the press of all corners. His sitar recitals were featured many times in National Programs of Music of All India Radio and Doordarshan.
Pandit Bandopadhyay’s musical expressions are attributed as post-modern by music critics. They are instrumental in giving out unique musical experience as a result of the synthesis of his extensive training in Senia-Shahjehanpur, Imdadkhani, and Rampur-Senia gharanas.
He has not less than nine CD-s to his credit. These were produced by well-known music companies in India and in the USA. The companies include renowned companies like RPG-HMV [India] and India Archive Music Limited, New York [USA].
He participated in the Plenary Session of UNESCO Conference held in Finland in 2003, the only participant in this conference from India. He visited the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada as Distinguished India-focus Visitor. He was also invited as special visitor to do a presentation at the XIIIth International Conference of the German Musicological Society held at Weimar, Germany. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invited him as a George A. Miller Visiting Professor, which was a highly prestigious assignment and first offered to any Indian musician. He visited the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs as ‘Artist in Residence’. Recently, the University of Chicago has invited him as the ‘Musician in Residence’.
Sanjoy started his musical training under his illustrious father Pt. Peeyush Prasanna Bandopadhyay. He had the rare opportunity to have rigorous training under Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra for 18 years. He received extremely intensive training on advanced sitar techniques and music making under Pt. Bimalendu Mukherjee. He also learnt with Pt. Manas Chakraborty, Dr. M.R. Gautam, and Pt. Ajay Sinha Roy.