Niladri Kumar

Niladri Kumar was born in April. His father Kartick Kumar, was a sitar player, and was the disciple of Ravi Shankar Bio coming soon... >> Read More... . At the age of four years, Kumar began learning Sitar under the guidance of his father. At the age of six years, Kumar gave his first stage performance at Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. He was a part of the tour in Zakir Hussain's Masters of the Percussion. He also became a part of Selvaganesh and Jonas Helberg for the album Kali's Son. He also joined John McLaughlin for their Album Floating Point. He also joined hands with several music directors like Shankar- Ehsaan-Loy, A.R.Rahman and Pritam.

In March 2007, he was awarded as the young musician from the Sangeet Natak Academy’s Ustad Bismillah Khan The Shehnai legend Ustad Bismillah Khan was born w >> Read More... Yuva Puraskar. For his album “If”, he received the Best Classical and Fusion Instrumental Award from MTV Immies Award. He also developed an Instrument which is the combination of Sitar and Guitar named “Zitar”. His motivation was to move from the Sitar to create the Rock Guitar sound. He also modified the structure of the instrument by changing the total number of strings from twenty to five. In order to get loud sound from the device like guitar, he added an electric pickup to the Zitar.

He used the only device to make his album in the year 2008 and released the album with the name of the tool as Zitar. He also wrote for several albums of which Priority is his first track in the year 2003. He improved his performance of his albums by getting the feedback from the audience reaction for developing his tracks. He stimulated his performance by mixing his tracks with other genres like Electronic, Lounge, and Rock. By 2013, for his contribution to the Indian classical music, he received the award of MN Mathur from Fifty-first Maharana Kumbha Sangeet Samaroh. He started making music for the albums from the year 2001 with his first album Together.

After that he made several albums which include Revelation in the year 2002 and in the year 2003 he made three albums which includes Dharohar, Saanjh Sur and If: Magical Sounds of Sitar. In 2005, his albums Sitar Gaze and Yoga Lounge were released. Apart from albums, he has also worked for some of the movies with the instruments Sitar as well as Zitar. He has composed for the Song Aawara in the movie 7 Khoon Maaf and Tere Naina for the movie My Name is Khan.