Album Notes

John Churchville holds a BFA Degree in World Music Performance from California Institute of the Arts, where he majored in North Indian Classical music, and minored in West African music and dance. He has been playing drums for over 20 years, and has studied tabla for the last nine. Currently, John is the music director at Go Like the Wind School in Ann Arbor, and also holds a steady roster of private students.
John has performed in India, Germany, Canada, and all over the United States with a wide range of groups including the Gratitude Steel Band, Deep Blue Jazz Trio, Ann Arbor Kirtan, the U of M Indian Classical Music and Dance group, and the Michigan Pops Orchestra.

Meeta Banerjee has been a musician almost her whole life. She began learning the sitar at the age of 8 from the Detroit Institute for Indian Music from Dr. Rajan Sachdeva after watching Pandit Ravi Shankar perform. Since then, she has performed all over Michigan in venues such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, Ann Arbor Book festival, Crazy Wisdom Tearoom to name a few. In 2005, she and John Churchville were invited as guest artists for the Michigan Pops Orchestra’s “Pops Around the World” and played an arrangement of Rag Yaman with the orchestra.
One of her main goals is to be able to educate people about Indian classical arts, which is why in 2000, she founded Saadhanai’s Classical music group which is a student run organization at the University of Michigan. Saadhanai is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Indian Hindustani classical music by offering sitar, tabla and vocal classes here in Ann Arbor. She is also trained in Western classical on the piano and the violin, as well as a trained Indian classical dancer.