Dr Pete Yelding is a sitarist and cellist. He is at least the 7th generation of a family of travelling performers of Romani origin. Aged 4, he chose the cello as his primary mode of performance. His sitar training began later, during the first year of an undergraduate in Composition with cello at Birmingham Conservatoire.
After over a decade of preparatory study of Hindustani music in the UK, he eventually travelled to Kolkata, where he met and became a sitar student of sarod master, Ustad Irfan Muhammad Khan — the last remaining hereditary proprietor of the oldest sarod and sitar gharana, the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur Gharana.
Pete is one of only a handful of musicians in the world now dedicated to propagating the expansive repertoire and unique performance style of this illustrious musical lineage, which has retained many of the approaches to developing a raga of the Senia bīnkars and rababiyas of the 19th century.
He brings to his performances a deep reverence for the melodic expression and atmosphere of the raga he is presenting. His sound is influenced by the stirring old style of past sitar luminaries of the gharana, Ustad Ilyas Khan, Ustad Yusuf Ali Khan and Ustad Waliullah Khan.
With guest musicians.
Presented in Association with SAMA Arts Network
Photo Credits: Nick Kane