[CEX34]

Arolkar’s 1968 Private concert

Sharadchandra Arolkar

Apple Music Tidal Spotify

Sharadchandra Arolkar w Ravi Bellare: Arolkar’s 1968 Private concert – CEX34 – release date 20211008

Some years back Country & Eastern released an album with a remarkable tabla solo by the great Ravi Bellare (CEX16 https://countryandeastern.se/records/ravi-bellare/). The album was recorded at a private concert in Chembur, Bombay in 1968 and was the conclusion of a great two and a half hour vocal concert by the Gwalior Gharama maestro Sharadchandra Arolkar. We are happy to release this intimate concert in full on October 8, 2021. Pandit Arolkar is masterfully accompanied by Ravi Bellare and Masit Khan on sarangi with supporting vocal by his student Pt. Sharad Sathe.

A doyen of the Gwalior Gharana, Pandit Sharadchandra Arolkar was born in 1912 in Karachi but he moved to Gwalior, where he learned from three acknowledged masters, Pandit Krishnrao Shankar Pandit, his uncle Pandit Eknath Pandit and Pandit Krishnrao Mulay. He had an extensive repertoire of 600 rare and authentic bandishes, ranging from classical dhrupad and khayal to light classical tappa, thumri and dadra as well as some 350 self-composed themes. Reclusive by temperament all his life, yet when he performed, his music came as a brilliant revelation. Pandit Arolkar died in 1994.

Legendary Bombay sarangist Ustad Masit Khan was a student of Abdul Majid Khan.

Pandit Ravi Bellare appears on two other C&E albums, CE22 and CEX16