Padmini Rao

Smt. Padmini K. Rao is a leading exponent of the Kirana Gharana of Hindustani classical music and one of the senior-most disciples of the late Padma Vibhushan Dr. Prabha Atre, with whom she trained for over 35 years. Initiated into vocal music under Pandit Manohar Otavakar, she studied the sitar for seven years with Mrs. Pramila Dagar before returning to vocal music for eleven years of rigorous voice culture under the Dhrupad and Rudra Veena maestro Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Her forte is pure classical khayal, though she is equally at home in light-classical forms such as thumri and bhajan. She has performed at the Tansen Sangeet Samaroh Gwalior, Dover Lane Music Conference Calcutta, Sawai Gandharva Mahotsav, NCPA and Nehru Centre Mumbai, Bharat Bhavan Bhopal, India Habitat Centre Delhi, Bangalore International Centre and the Jaipur Literature Festival, and internationally at MIT Boston (MITHAS), the University of Pennsylvania, Laya at UC Berkeley, the Asia Society New York and Maison de l'Inde Paris. A postgraduate in music from SNDT University Bombay and a Chemistry honours rank holder from the University of Bombay, she conducts workshops and lecture-demonstrations on music appreciation, the rasa and time theories of music, and khayal development, and has translated over 500 of Dr. Prabha Atre's compositions into English, published as the Swaranginee, Swaranjanee and Swarangee volumes.