Swapan Chaudhuri

Indian tabla player, born in 1945. Swapan's tabla training began when he was five years old under Pandit Santosh Krishna Biswas, an eminent exponent of the Lucknow Gharana. By the time he was ten, Ali Akbar Khan was inviting Swapan to the Ali Akbar College which he had recently opened in Calcutta – a precursor to the college Ali Akbar Khan would open in the US fourteen years later.
Later Swapan studied economics and graduated from Jadavpur University. In 1969 he played with Ali Akbar Khan at the Tansen Music Conference and decided after the great success to become a professional musician.
In the past decades he performed i.e. with Pandit Ravi Shankar, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Pandit Jasraj and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. Swapan Chaudhuri is Director of Percussion at the Ali Akbar College of Music (AACM) in San Rafael, California where he started teaching in 1981 and Chairperson for the World Music Programme at the California Institute of Performing Arts in L.A.