Sitarist Niladri Kumaar brings a concert honoring the late tabla master Zakir Hussain to Byers Theatre on Friday, Oct. 30, at 8 p.m.
The show, titled "Space Between the Notes," draws on the album Kumaar and Hussain recorded live in Mumbai in 2023. The album came out Oct. 1 on Moment! Records, according to WABE. Hussain died Dec. 15, 2024, at a San Francisco hospital. He was 73.
Kumaar told WABE he does not frame the tour as a backward look. "It's not that I want to play a homage or a tribute or a thing which is in the past," he said.
The program mixes pieces from that final duo recording with Kumaar's own compositions. Pianist Agnelo Fernandes, drummer Sambit Chatterjee and tabla player Satyajit Talwalkar join him on stage, according to WABE.
Kumaar started learning the sitar at 4 and is the fifth generation of his family to play it, he told WABE. He gave his first performance at about 6, in Pondicherry, India.
He also plays the Zitar, an electric sitar. Kumaar told WABE the two instruments pull in opposite directions: the sitar is softer, so he plays it as loud as he can to reach more people, while the Zitar is loud and he tries to whisper on it. He compares the Zitar to poet Rabindranath Tagore translating his own Bengali poems into English. A translation loses some of the original, he said, but it reaches more people.
The album's title comes from a phrase Kumaar used in an earlier interview to describe playing with Hussain, WABE reported. Hussain's widow, Kathak dancer Antonia Minnecola, helped with the album's packaging, Kumaar told WABE.
Tickets range from $51 to $121, according to the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center event page. Doors open at 7 p.m. at Byers Theatre, 1 Galambos Way. Event parking costs $10.
