Tower Seminar- The Sarode, the Hybrid and its Others exploring the organology of the North Indian lute

Presenters: Dr Matthew Noone, Paul Seery, Sougata Roy Chowdhury

Chair: Dr Matthew Noone

This seminar will bring together an impromptu collection of a multitude of the North Indian Classical lutes called the sarode. These instruments belong to three performers who represent very different approaches to the instrument, rationales of construction and performance aesthetic.
While the sarode is predominantly used as a solo melodic instrument in the classical tradition of North India, due to the ever-increasing complexity of global music exchange, it also now has become adapted to suit many other different contemporary genres. Sougata Roy Chowdhury will explore the sarode in its classical form and Matthew Noone will discuss his own ‘hybrid’ sarodes which he had custom built. Finally, Paul Seery will discuss his own home made sarode creations.

Sougata Roy Chowdhury is considered to be among the most talented sarode players of his generation. Sougata started to learn sarode at the age of 10 with Ustad Dyanesh Khan, has also studied with Ustad Aashish Khan and most recently with Pandit Santosh Banerjee. He performs and tours regularly across India and Europe.

Paul Seery from Birr, Co. Offaly, has long had a love and appreciation for Indian culture through his experience learning bansuri (Indian flute) and meditation. Paul has designed and made over a dozen of his own prototype sarodes, which are entirely unique.

Dr Matthew Noone has studied North Indian Classical music for over a decade with Sougata Roy Chowdhury in Kolkata and more recently with UK based Sarodiya, K. Sridhar. He performs on a ‘hybrid’ sarode, which was created with funds from Music Network, and was also an Irish Research Council scholar. He completed practice based PhD research into Irish-Indian musical sympathies in the Irish world Academy in the University of Limerick in 2016.