Veena Chandra is an internationally renowned sitarist, composer, teacher and choreographer. She is the founder and director of the Dance and Music School of India in Latham, NY (celebrating 31 years) where she teaches Indian classical music. She has been a faculty member at Skidmore College since 1990, teaching sitar in the Music Department. Since, 2014 she is also the Artist Associate in Sitar at Williams College (MA).
She is a recipient of a New York State Folk Art Grant 2003, and Artists Decentralization Grant and several SOS & Meet the Composer grants. Currently she does lecture-demonstrations and performances at numerous performance halls, music festivals, colleges, universities, & schools in the U.S. and India. She has received artist award as a composer through the Albany League of Arts in 2002. She has received several years of Community Arts Grants (2000, 2001, (2008–2019) through The Arts Center of the Capital Region and NYSCA. She has several CDs to her credit, including two very popular recordings with renowned Pandit Bikram Ghosh on tabla. Veena Chandra’s 2009-2010 India tour was in part sponsored by NYSCA and The Arts Center of the Capital Region. In December of 2018, Veena received the SRIJAN Music Excellence Award “in recognition of outstanding contribution in the field of Indian Classical Music”.
Her son, Devesh Chandra, has been learning the Tabla since the age of 3. He has learned Northern Indian Classical Music by accompanying his mother. Immersed in music at a young age, Devesh is fortunate to have grown up surrounded by iconic figures of Indian Music.
Devesh is a sought after tabla player and educator. In addition to tabla solos and playing with Indian classical music, he has collaborated and worked with musicians across a broad range of musical genres from Western Folk and Western Classical to Flamenco and Jazz as well as Latin Music. Devesh has collaborated with notables such as Sumitra Guha, Anup Jalota, Susie Ibarra, Tarun Bhattacharya, Brian Mellick, Alex Torres. He has also composed music for modern dance, most notably his highly acclaimed commission House of Fables for the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company. He has performed at a wide array of music festivals in both the US and abroad including Wanderlust, The NYS Fair and Frendly Gathering.
