The bansuri is a long 6 or 7 holed transverse bamboo flute that can be anywhere from about a foot to almost 3 feet long depending on how it is pitched. North Indian classical flutists play a rather long flute pitched anywhere from F to D. The deeper the pitch, the longer the flute. I play an E flute when I play classical music but begin my students at A or G. (Today I learned that the oldest musical instrument ever to be found in Europe is a flute made from the bone of a bear. It is dated at around 40,000 years old and was found in the Valley of the Idrijca River which I believe is in Slovenia.)
I first began to study and play the bansuri in the 1970's at the Ali Akbar College of music in San Rafael, California. There I learned vocal music with India's "emperor" of music Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, bansuri with flute maestro G.S. Sachdev and tala (Indian rhythm) with world renown tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. In 1983 I had the amazing good fortune to become a student of India's greatest living flutist, Hariprasad Chaurasia. The in 1987 I was awarded an American Institute for Indian Studies/Smithsonian Fellowship for studies with Hariprasad Chaurasia in India. My latest album is my first to feature solely the bansuri, accompanied by the traditional tabla (drums) and tanpura (string drone). It's called Ragini: Fluted Voice of the Goddess. I now perform classical music concerts (in addition to the journeys into fusion) and teach bansuri, vocal and Indian music for western instruments in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I began playing gamelan music at U.C. Santa Cruz where I heard my first ever live gamelan. At U.C.S.C. we were fortunate to have a native Javanese master of the Sundanese gamelan by the name of Pak Undang. In 1979 I studied with Balinese gamelan leader Wayan Suecca and Pak Tjokro at the Center for World Music under the direction of Professor Bob Brown. The first authentic Balinese gamelan group in America was just forming -called Sekar Jaya - and I was fortunate to be able to play with that group. Then I went to Bali and studied the now rare form called the Semar Pegulingan with gamelan leader I Madé Gerindem in the village of Teges. After returning from that first trip, I recorded the album Natural Rhythms with Ancient Future using gamelan instruments crafted specifically for play with western tuned instruments. In 1986 I returned to Bali on a Fulbright Scholarship to learn Gender Wayang music, the music for Shadow Puppet theater and also released Balinese Dream, my first independent release after Ancient Future. Balinese Dream is an "acoustic collage" weaving together live natural sounds and contemporary arrangements of traditional and original compositions for gamelan, Indian and western instruments. In connection with my work with Balinese music and my awesome regard for the Balinese culture, I also lead educational and cultural journeys to Bali introducing people to the music, arts and spiritual traditions of the Balinese.
I began to study classical piano as a child and continued to do so from age 5 to age 11. I first picked up the flute in band when in the 5th grade. Then I moved to Manhattan from upstate New York and my new school had no band! When I was fourteen, I saved up enough money to buy myself a flute and began teaching myself as I swore I would no longer learn in the traditional classical method which had never been my "preferred" way of learning. I have continued since then to develop my own style of playing silver flute influenced primarily by jazz sources and by my intensive involvement with the Indian classical bamboo flute, the bansuri. I graduated in from U.C.S.C. where my major focus was jazz and gamelan. There I performed with a variety of jazz ensembles and continued to do so after leaving U.C.S.C. I now continue to play and teach silver flute both from a classical western, classical Indian and jazz repertoire. I also teach the classical Indian bansuri and I compose music which often draws on all of these forms and instrumentation while spinning off into its own new forms.
