Sitarist Adesh Widmar to perform in Chicago

CHICAGO: Sitar wizard Adesh Widmar will be performing in Chicago for the first time, offering two concerts at Unity in Chicago on Wednesday, October 14. The evening's performance, entitled Songs of the Soul, celebrates the music of Indian spiritual Master Sri Chinmoy. The concerts are free.

"Songs of the Soul" is a musical journey which celebrates the music of Sri Chinmoy. Adesh, accompanied by his wife Ajita on tabla, performs in the classical Indian style, creating beautiful, improvisational creations based on Sri Chinmoy's melodies. In the spirit of Indian ragas, Adesh's style is very introspective; the listener is led into the spontaneous flow of meditation.

His classical Indian interpretation fuses the exotic rhythms of ancient India with Sri Chinmoy's haunting melodies. As part of a spiritual quest, Adesh studied Indian classical music with late P.V. Nandasiri, one of the most gifted musicians in Sri Lanka. In 1987, he became a student of Sri Chinmoy, which encouraged both his meditation and musical studies.

Sri Chinmoy, who passed away on October 11, 2007, taught that music can be a vehicle to communicate spiritual consciousness. He believed that when music is created from the spiritual heart, then it can carry the listener beyond barriers of race, language and culture. "It is through music," he wrote, "that the universal feeling of oneness can be achieved in the twinkling of an eye."

Sri Chinmoy himself performed more than 750 concerts free of charge at many prestigious venues. In a creative odyssey that included music, art, literature and sports, Sri Chinmoy composed a monumental total of 21,000 songs-13,000 of which were written in his native Bengali.

Adesh uses Sri Chinmoy's melodies as a raga source and improvises with the songs in the Indian classical style. The blending of the ancient raga rhythms of India with Sri Chinmoy's haunting melodies creates beautiful seamless meditative improvisations. He began performing his music, accompanied by his wife Ajita on tabla and vocals in 1992, and has performed across Europe.

M Pradhan