About the Composers

Sri Chinmoy's heart-warming, soul-stirring music has been acclaimed and celebrated by musical giants including Ravi Shankar, Leonard Bernstein and Quincy Jones. Over his lifetime, Sri Chinmoy offered almost 800 concerts around the world, all of them free of charge, in the belief that the inner peace and happiness he sought to convey through his music was everyone's birthright. More on Sri Chinmoy...

Rabindranath Tagore was one of the world's greatest writers of literature, poetry and novels, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He was also a great educationalist who ideas are still ahead of the times today, almost 70 years after his demise. Tagore was awarded the knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators protesting colonial laws.

About the performers

Rezwana Choudhury Bannya is one of the world's foremost singers of Rabindranath Tagore's songs. In addition to having an illustrious singing career, Ms. Choudhury opened a music school, "Surer Dhara", in 1992. And most recently she launched a program for underprivileged but deserving children living in the slums of Dhaka to learn music.

The Gandharva Loka Orchestra is a 127-member international orchestra, featuring star musicians and singers from over 15 countries, working as a seamless ensemble. The Orchestra was formed in 2007 and is led by Panchajanya Burri, a classically trained guitarist, whose symphonic arrangements bring a vastness and celestial expression to the purity and simplicity of Sri Chinmoy's compositions. More than 40 members of the Orchestra will fly to Dhaka to participate in the historic concert on 13 December 2009.

More links

• Read the original concert announcement...
• Read more about the concept behind the concert...