Mehfil-e-Hop Yard: Dr Pete Yelding

About

A new event for The Hop Yard. The Mehfil Space is bringing south Asian classical music to the heart of Forest Row. Experience the authentic and intimate atmosphere of a "mehfil" with Dr Pete Yelding on sitar, accompanied by virtuoso tabla player, Junaid Ali. PLUS delicious Sri Lankan food on sale from East Grinstead Sri Lankan restaurant, Va-Nak-Kam.

Dr Pete Yelding is a sitarist and cellist. He is the 7th documented generation of a family of travelling performers of Romani origin. His sitar training began when he encountered Hindustani music in his first year of music college and felt a deep affinity with the tradition. After over a decade of preparatory study in the UK, he travelled to Kolkata, where he became a student of sarod master, Ustad Irfan Muhammad Khan the last hereditary proprietor of the oldest lineage of sarod and sitar players, the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur Gharana.
Pete is now one of only a handful of musicians dedicated to propagating the expansive repertoire and unique style of the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur Gharana. He establishes in his performances a raw, but tender evocation of whichever raga he is presenting. He seeks to rehabilitate for modern audiences the deeply stirring, heavier sound of past sitar and sarod luminaries.

Over his professional career Pete has performed and collaborated with artists such as Ustad Shahbaz Hussain, Kuljit Bhamra, Talvin Singh, Sura Susso, Jonathan Mayer; and organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bristol Old Vic, SAMA Arts, Cape Farewell, Birmingham REP, Oxford University & Zero Classikal.