Adrian McNeil

Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Adrian McNeil received intensive training on sarod from Ashok Roy, a senior disciple of maestro Ali Akbar Khan, for more than two decades. After this he took advanced training from Sachindra Nath Roy, a disciple of Alauddin Khan and Inayat Khan. Adrian’s playing follows the Maihar gharana of Hindustani music. He has also taken additional guidance from the well known vocalist and musicologist Dr. Ashok Ranade.

Adrian has studied, worked and performed in India and has also undertaken tours of Europe and Asia. He performs extensively in Australia.

His performance skills have been complemented by intensive research into Hindustani music. Apart from holding a PhD in music he has written widely on Hindustani music including, the authoritative book sarod entitled “Inventing the Sarod: A Cultural History”.

He is currently based in Sydney where he is also a lecturer in the Department of Media, Music and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University.

For details, visit http://adrianmcneil.com/

Arun Khopkar

Arun Khopkar is an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India. After getting his diploma in 1974, he has been working as a filmmaker, film scholar and film teacher. Many of his films on art forms like music, dance, painting, architecture and literature have won national and international awards, including the Golden Lotus, the highest national award in India, which he has won three times. His feature film, an adaptation of a Nikolai Gogol’s short story was shown in Moscow, Sarajevo, Cairo and Beppu (Japan) film festivals.

He has taught film theory and practice at the Film and Television Institute of India, the Whistling Woods, the All-Union School for Higher Studies in Film Direction (Moscow), Jawaharlal Nehru University, Central University (Hyderabad), National School of Drama, National Film Archive and many other institutions.

His book on the Indian Film director Guru Dutt got the National Award for the best book on cinema and is soon to be published by Penguin. He is an internationally acknowledged authority on the aesthetic theories of Sergei Eisenstein. He has contributed several seminal papers on film aesthetics to various international conferences, seminars and journals.

A linguist, Khopkar is widely traveled and has visited the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Holland, Russia, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore.

Chandrika Grover Ralleigh

Born in 1960, Chandrika Grover Ralleigh she studied in a private school before going on to the Convent of Jesus and Mary in New Delhi where she finished her Higher Secondary in 1977. She chose to study languages at Jawaharlal Nehru University, German and Urdu, with Philosophy leading to a postgraduate degree in 1983.

In 1983 she joined the Business India Group where she worked for the India Magazine, going on to Orient Longman (now Orient Black Swan Pvt Ltd) in 1985. In 1988 she joined the Cultural Affairs Division of the British Council assisting in its activities till she took over the management of its North India programme in 1998. She continued in this role till January 2006.

Some of the major projects she was involved with include the loan of the illustrated manuscript, the Padshahnama from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Enduring Image exhibition with the British Museum and the National Museum, successive tours to India by Shared Experience Theatre, the Kosh company, the Indo-European Jazz Window, the European Union Community Youth Orchestra and a high-profile private premiere of the Oscar-winning film, Elizabeth. In addition, she was pioneering in her efforts to develop a rigorous literature programme for the Council from 2000 onwards leading up to a feminist writer’s festival in 2003. She was also instrumental in fleshing out the public programmes that the Council hosted in its flagship office in India as well as the management of the Charles Wallace India Trust’s awards schemes across the country.

In March 2006, Pro Helvetia – the Swiss Arts Council appointed her as the director of its first liaison office in Asia, in New Delhi, in which role she continues to act. The office has responsibility for the Indian sub-continent and exists to promote Swiss arts and ideas among Indian audiences as well as professional contact between Indian and Swiss practitioners across the visual, applied and performing arts.

In this capacity she has promoted a much-coveted Residencies programme for artists of both countries, has initiated an ongoing publishing collaboration in India with Manic Mongol and Seagull in the area of the graphic novel and belletristique respectively and has presented a range of innovative music, theatre and contemporary dance performances from Switzerland.

Hiros Nakagawa

Born in Yamagata, Japan in 1950, Hiros Nakagawa studied Indian music theory at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in northern India from 1981 to 1984. In addition to his formal studies, he studied vocal music with the Dhrupad singer Ritwik Sannyal, and bansuri with Gorakhnath Das.
After returning to Japan, he began giving bansuri performances, and since 1988, he has been a pupil of the world-renowned bansuri player Hariprasad Chaurasia. Nakagawa’s current activities include not only live performance, but also the planning and production of Asian music and Shomyo (Buddhist chanting) events throughout Japan and Europe in his capacity as director of Tengaku Productions. He has given lectures, made appearances on television and radio, and translated and published works on Indian music theory in a continued effort to promote the performing arts of Japan as well as other Asian countries. He has toured recently and gave concerts to the UK in 2008 and Holland, Belgium and Austria in 2009.
In 1983 she joined the Business India Group where she worked for the India Magazine, going on to Orient Longman (now Orient Black Swan Pvt Ltd) in 1985. In 1988 she joined the Cultural Affairs Division of the British Council assisting in its activities till she took over the management of its North India programme in 1998. She continued in this role till January 2006.

Hiros Nakagawa’s trip to India for Baajaa Gaajaa 2011 has been supported by the Japan Foundation.

Jenny Bilfield

Since joining Stanford Lively Arts as Artistic & Executive Director in 2006 Jenny Bilfield has stewarded the organization’s transformation from university presenter to a campus-based arts producer. Hired during the early days of Stanford’s arts initiative, Bilfield has collaborated extensively with faculty and program partners to develop new pathways for immersive, high-impact arts experiences for students and arts-goers in Silicon Valley and wider Bay area. She has also been a member of the core planning team for Stanford’s 844-seat Bing Concert Hall, which will open in January 2013.

Prior to joining Stanford Bilfield held numerous leadership roles in the arts throughout her 21 years in New York City. Best known for her specialized work in the strategic management, promotion, and presentation of contemporary music, Bilfield spent 12 years at music publisher Boosey & Hawkes where, as President, she was part of the international management team that led the company’s public-to-private transition. Bilfield also stewarded several high-impact composer focused initiatives for the company, notably The Stravinsky Project, Steve Reich @ 75, and the international multi-year Copland 2000 celebration. As Executive Director of the National Orchestral Association and founder of the New Music Orchestral Project, Bilfield launched new American orchestral works through readings and premieres at Carnegie Hall and Manhattan School of Music. For this work Bilfield received an Adventuresome Programming award from ASCAP, and an orchestra leadership award from the League of American Orchestras. Bilfield is an active participant in industry convenings, foundation and presenter panels, and has held seats on boards of organizations including the American Music Center and League of American Orchestra. She holds a BA in Music from the University of Pennsylvania and is married to composer Joel Phillip Friedman.

Jenny Bilfield
Artistic & Executive Director
STANFORD LIVELY ARTS
Stanford University
425 Santa Teresa Street, MC 2250
Stanford, CA 94305
Phone: 650.725.1959
Phone, Assistant, Ruth Mikusko: 650.725.1960
Fax: 650.723.8231
Email: bilfield@stanford.edu

Linda Hess

From poetry, to India, to religion and performance, to Indian religious poetry in performance, the trajectory of Linda’s creative interests and career have led to her current work on the fifteenth-century Indian mystical poet Kabir–his presence in oral as well as written traditions, and the musical forms and social contexts of Kabir’s poetry in India today.

Linda is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, where she has taught for fifteen years. Publications include Singing Emptiness: Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2009); “Fighting Over Kabir’s Dead Body,” in From Ancient to Modern: Religion, Power, and Community in North India, ed. Ishita Banerjee and Saurabh Dube (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009); “Ramlila: The Audience Experience,” in The Life of Hinduism, ed. John Stratton Hawley and Vasudha Narayanan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); The Bijak of Kabir, trans. Linda Hess and Shukdev Singh, essays and notes by Linda Hess (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); “Lovers’ Doubts: Questioning the Tulsī Rāmāyaṇa,” in Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, & New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); “Rejecting Sita: Indians Respond to the Ideal Man’s Cruel Treatment of His Ideal Wife,” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion (1999) 67:1: 1-32.

Meenakshi Shedde

Meenakshi Shedde is an independent film curator, film festival consultant, film critic, film director and journalist based in Bombay/Mumbai, India.

She is India Consultant to the Berlin and Dubai Film Festivals. She has also been Curator of Asian, Indian, Bollywood, and World Cinema packages for international festivals worldwide, including the Pusan International Film Festival-S. Korea, Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival-S. Korea, International Film Festival of India (IFFI-Goa), Mumbai Film Festival and Made By Women Film Festival.

Winner of the National Award for Best Film Critic, she has been on 15 international juries on almost every continent, including the FIPRESCI International Critics’Jury of the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and Oberhausen Film Festival; NETPAC Asian Jury of the Berlin Film Festival; International Jury of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Argentina; Asian Film Award Jury of the Hong Kong International Film Festival; Taipei Film Festival Jury, Intl Jury, Up-and-Coming International Film Festival Hannover, Germany; National Film Award Jury of India, and Indian Panorama Jury of International Film Festival of India (IFFI, Goa).

She has 25 years’ experience in journalism, including 11 years in the Times of India group, where she was Assistant Editor. She freelances for Variety, Film Comment, Cineaste (US); Cahiers du Cinema (France); Sight and Sound, bfi.org.uk (UK); Times of India, Screen,DNA, Tehelka, Cinemaya, dearcinema.com (India); Carte di Cinema (Italy), rouge.com.au (Australia) and Celluloid (Bangladesh). She has written for the books Au Sud du Cinema (Cahiers du Cinema/Arte), ‘Bollywood: Das Indische Kino und die Schweiz’ (Museum fur Gestaltung, Switzerland), and Import Export (Cultural Transfers Germany-Austria-India, Berlin, Parthas, 2005). She has also directed a short film ‘Looking for Amitabh’ and line-produced five documentaries for Arte/independent directors worldwide shot in India, including Uli Gaulke’s German documentary Comrades in Dreams (Leinwandfieber, Arte), nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Festival, 2007.

Email: meenakshishedde@gmail.com
Mobile: +91.9833148347
http://meenakshisheddeartsandculture.blogspot.com
Address: 103 Mangal Aadesh, 4th Road, TPS III, K-11 Gym Lane, Near Khar Subway, Santa Cruz East, Mumbai 400055, India

Pratima Kirloskar

Pratima Kirloskar has made contributions towards the development of Pune city in the arenas of Education, HealthCare, showcasing of technology and Entrepreneurship. She works in close co-ordination with the Pune Corporation to help citizens. With a team of citizens a monsoon line, www.ourpune.com, was set up in July 2007 to help Pune Municipal Corporation receive complaints from citizens concerning roads.

Over the last decade, Pratima has served on many organizations in a voluntary and honorary capacity, and engaged in creating an extensive network of people from academic, research, business, and politics.

In the arena of education, Pratima serves as a Board Member or Trustee of Education Foundations like – Pune Pratham, Symbiosis International School and on the standing committee of the Pune Police Public School, (a subsidized school for children of police constables). She is also a trustee on a Japanese NGO called Ashta No Kai which helps women and children in 7 villages in Maharashtra.

In the area of Healthcare, she has helped to foster collaboration across a range of entities – Biotech Research Institutes, Pharmaceutical companies, practicing doctors, Engineering Colleges, various Institutes in Pune, Government of India Ministries, and Embassies of foreign countries (including USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Austria). Currently she is a part of ASSOCHAM, on the national biotech group as a co-chair.

Pratima Kirloskar is also interested in promoting the effective use of Information technology in the manufacturing and design sector. She was one of the founder members of the Indus Entrepreneurs, Pune Chapter and its first President for two turns.

She has showcased new and emerging technologies across different verticals from 1999. She is one of the Founder members of the animation and gaming committee in the Maratha Chamber Of Commerce, Pune. She is an active member in the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Young Indian Group.

Pratima is a member of the Kirloskar Family which runs one of India’s leading Industrial Groups.

Yamuna ,98 (3-7) Baner,
Pune 411045,India
Phone: +91-20-27211008
E-mail: Pratima@kbl.co.in
Web: www.innovationpune.com

Rajula Shah

Pune-based filmmaker Rajula Shah completed her Postgraduate Diploma in Filmmaking (specializing in Film Direction) at the Film & T.V Institute of India, Pune. She has a Masters degree in English Literature from the Bhopal University.

Rajula Shah’s films include Sabad Nirantar (Word within the word), a creative documentary looking at the fourteenth century bhakti poetry resonating across twenty first century India, which won an award at the Horizonte Preis at Dokfest ‘08, Munich. Her film Beyond The Wheel, a film looking at three women in Indian Pottery, with reference to the taboo of the wheel, was adjudged the Second best documentary at Vibgyor, Kerala, and received the Special Jury award at Signs Film Festival, Thiruvananthapuram in 2006.

Rajula’s has edited and translated publications related to poetry. Her collection of poetry called Parchhain ki khidki se (through the window of shadow) first collection of poetry, won the Navlekhan Puraskar of Bharatiya Gyanpeeth for new writing. She has also been publishing short stories, poems, drawings and sketches in literary journals and magazines, and has designed brochures, flyers for artists and book jackets.

She has made short videos around the life, art/craft of tribal artists.

Rajula Shah has participated in conferences and poetry readings in India and abroad. Her forthcoming works include a creative documentary based on the work and tales told by veteran artisan and potter-storyteller Loknath Rana, and a collaborative video artwork with visual artist Lucia King on the annual journey of the Warkaris in Maharashtra. She is also bringing out a Hindi translation of an edited volume of letters of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo.

Dr. Rashmi Poddar

Dr. Rashmi Poddar studied Sanskrit and Vedanta in the 1980s under the tutelage of the renowned Sanskrit scholar Acharya Bhai Shankar Purohit. In 1997, she was awarded the prestigious Mellon Fellowship by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for her project on Hari-Hara. In 1998, the Department of Philosophy started a division on Aesthetics and appointed her as its Honorary Director. In 1999, she curated a one-year Post Graduate Diploma course in Indian Aesthetics, which she also directed for eight academic years. She now conducts this programme at Jnanapravaha Mumbai, an institution solely dedicated to education of the arts.
Besides this, Dr. Rashmi Poddar is currently a visiting lecturer at the National Museum Institute, New Delhi, and has also taught Indian art at the School of Oriental Art and African Studies, University of London. She is often invited to lecture and participate in seminars, workshops and symposiums around the world. She has presented several illustrated papers at renowned art institutions such as the British Museum, London; Hebrew University, Jerusalem; El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City; Indian Art Circle, London; School of Oriental and African Studies, London; Nehru Centre, London; Sepia International Inc., New York; Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York; Museum Society, Bombay; and Asiatic Society of Bombay, to name a few.

Rashmi Poddar is the Associate Editor for Marg Publications, the well-known Art Publishing House. She is also the Chairperson of India Foundation For The Arts (IFA), an independent, professionally managed grant-making organization for the arts.
Rashmi is on the board of several prestigious associations in the country and is actively involved in the promotion of the arts in India.

Dr. Saryu Doshi

Art Historian, Research Scholar, Editor and Curator Dr. Saryu Doshi began her career as a visiting professor at University of Michigan, USA (Jan to April 1976). She taught art history and culture at University of Pune (January to June 1978) and University of California, Berkeley, USA from March to June 1979.

Dr. Saryu Doshi’s contribution to the promotion of art and culture got her appointment as an Honorary Director of National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai in 1996, the year NGMA, Mumbai came into being.
Dr. Saryu Doshi had curated 13 exhibitions for NGMA Mumbai and it is under her Director and Curatorship, NGMA Mumbai acquired name and fame in Mumbai’s art world. In 1999, she was appointed as a protem-chairman of Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi till 2002.

Dr. Doshi is not only associated with scholarly research in the field of art and culture but she is deeply involved in theatre, dance, cinema and photography as well. 
 
She was conferred with “Padma-Shri” award in 1998, followed by “Women Achiever” from Bombay West Ladies Circle 10 in 2001 and Lifetime award from Art Society of India recently (2006).

Dr. Saryu Doshi has seven books to her credit including three as a co-author. She was invited for several seminars at National and International level and has delivered many lectures for various academic institutions, museums, cultural organizations in USA, Europe, China, South Africa, Botswana, Mauritius, Egypt and Oman. She also had the talks on art & culture on the All India Radio and the B.B.C.

Spandan Banerjee

Spandan Banerjee is an independent filmmaker based in Delhi, India. Under his alternative outfit Overdose Films he directs documentaries, narrative films as well as directs and produces commissioned film projects. His earlier films, BEWARE DOGS (Doc/45mins/2007) and THE FICTION (Fiction/45mins/2008) have been premiered and screened at various film festivals across the world. His other interests include designing, photography, cartooning and food. He is currently developing his new music documentary NIGHT SONGS and scripting two feature film projects. All details of his film work can be viewed at www.overdosefilms.com and he can be contacted at spandan@overdosefilms.com

Sonya Mazumdar

Sonya Mazumdar is a co-founder, producer and CEO of EarthSync, a record label producing high end audio and visual content, based in Chennai, South India. Productions feature traditional music recorded across Asia and Middle East, often in collaboration with other traditional music styles and musicians from across the world. Sonya Mazumdar has a background in design, over 15 years of project management experience, and is a writer and avid traveller.

Tasneem Vahanvaty

Tasneem Vahanvaty is the Head of Music, Film and Interactive Arts at British Council for India and Sri Lanka. With a passion for the arts and an interest in a variety of art forms – theatre, film, music, fine art, this job suits Tasneem perfectly. Tasneem has taken a personal interest in the music industry in India and spends a lot of her energy trying to facilitate its growth.

Vijay Nair

Vijay Nair is part of the Only Much Louder team, an independent artist management business platform. He manages shows, organizes music events and festivals, and looks after a record label and a production house. He was awarded the International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009 by the British Council.

http://oml.in/