Pt.Rajendra Teredesai

"Music is meditation.
Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing
the music of silence."

Rajendra Teredesai is one of India's leading classical bansuri (Indian bamboo flute) maestros. He possesses a distinctive individuality, evolved over years of dedicated study and arduous practice, perfected to produce a deep and richly soothing tone and flawless blowing technique, combined with a perfect balance of pitch and a soulful playing style. His playing epitomizes the perfect blending and integration of the salient vocal and instrumental characteristics of Indian music. He is one of the foremost disciples of the internationally acclaimed flute maestro Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia.

Rajendra started learning the basics of Indian vocal music and tabla playing at the age of ten. Soon after, in 1968 he picked up a bansuri, that caught his imagination with its rich and soothing sound, and proceeded to play it all by himself. In 1976, he heard a recording, and later, a live concert of Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, and was so deeply influenced by this instrument and the maestro’s playing, that he resolved to master it. He spent several years during his studies in mechanical engineering, practicing vigorously and playing the flute diligently in the Krishna Temple of Manipal, Udupi, the holy town in the state of Karnataka in
South India.

He finally met the legendary flautist in 1981, who was impressed enough with Rajendra to take him under his fold and groom him in the finer aspects of flute playing. Over the years, involving obsessive dedication, discipline and incessant practice, Rajendra evolved as an artist and mastered his instrument to become the proverbial bansuri player par excellence. He further received invaluable guidance in the divine dhrupad tradition from Ustad Sayeeduddin Dagar. The culmination of all this led to his flute acquiring a profoundly spiritual and ethereal quality. He has been conferred with the SURMANI award by Sur Singar Samsad, Mumbai, besides several other citations by other organizations in the Indian Arts and Culture.

Rajendra has several raga based CD recordings credited to him in India. However, Path of the Divine and Divine Dimension albums are his first major CD releases in the USA. He has also made a major contribution with his ethereal flute playing to BlueMonk's album Enlightened Love, and also on some memorable tracks such as Dreaming in Color, Aqua Blue and Narmada Moonrise on Kashi Kollective's Shadow and Light album.

The epitome of his outstanding flute playing is possibly represented in its best light on the composition titled Param Sukh - and that's track 1 on Path of The Divine. Rajendra has recently completed a new project studio set up and is working on several new albums.
Besides the bansuri, Rajendra also plays other world woodwind instruments like the Native American Flute, the hulusi, dizi, quena and shakuhachi.