Bronco Student Center (BSC), Ursa Minor Room
Cal Poly Pomona Campus

Srinivas Reddy <www.srinivasreddy.org> is a professional concert sitarist and has given numerous recitals in the US and India. He has three albums to his credit: GITA (1999), Sitar & Tabla (2001) and Hemant & Jog (2008). He began his musical training as a guitarist and composer. In 1998 he graduated from Brown University with a BA in South Asian Studies and moved to San Francisco. There he met his guru and mentor Sri Partha Chatterjee, a direct disciple of the late sitar maestro Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. Since then he has dedicated himself to Indian classical music.

In 2011 Srinivas graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in South and Southeast Asian Studies. His thesis was on the Vijayanagar emperor Krishnadevaraya and his grand Telugu epic Amuktamalyada. Translations of that epic, entitled Giver of the Worn Garland, and of Kalidasa's Malavikagnimitram, entitled The Dancer and the King by Srinivas have been published by Penguin Books.

Srinivas is currently Assistant Professor of South and Southeast Asian Studies at IIT Gandhinagar. He spends his time performing, teaching and conducting research in California, Rhode Island and India.

Hemant Ekbote is an accomplished tabla player based in Irvine, CA, where he runs the Divine School of Music. He was trained under the renowned Maestro Pandit Sudhir Kumar Saxena, master of the Ajrada Delhi Gharana. He received his master’s degree in Music from M. S. University in Baroda, and also taught there as a faculty member. He has provided accompaniment to many eminent artists including Pandit Jasraj, Laxmi Shankar, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, Shujaat Husain Khan and Hridayanath Mangeshkar.