Sarbari Roy Chowdhury, the great sculptor whose works married the academic sensibility and realism of classical eastern or oriental art forms , with the modern abstraction and cubism of the west, whose interest in classical music poured directly into his works, as if the stone, clay or wood are entangled with the frequencies of music, not just as a idea or thought but supra-physically in a deeper sense, an introspection which is the fundamental bedrock of the creative artistic process, for a musician, painter or poet, in his his own words resembles a process of transformation of pain into ecstasy, a superconscient that hibernated in the depths of the human subconscious, in his own words “an artist must live on the edge of that anguish at all times to render it in his creation”, a crowning line that very much became the sustainable ethos of this esteemed music festival as a tribute to his birth anniversary. Musician from everywhere, new and old, well established and those who are looking to make their mark are all welcome, in a platform where artists manage the program, the promotion, the funds, and, almost everything required to host such an event where famous musicians like Pandit Krishna Bhatt, Pandit Abhijit Banerjee Abhik Mukherjee, David Trasoff, Ehren Hansen were the sharing the stage with other local musicians and artists. “All in such a short notice, the Durga Bari, a historical place is where musicians can collaborate, express themselves, a camaraderie which my father was so enthused about, a tradition I and my brother, trying live up to, with helping hands from various friends and artists, in India and abroad” said his son, Sougata Roy Chowdhury, himself an established sarid player. On display were rare photographs taken at Sarbari Roy Chowdhury’s residence of musicians including Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Siddheswari Devi, Mallikarjun Mansur and many other legendary musicians.

Sarbari Roy Chowdhury’s interest in music and his friendship with musicians is uncompromisingly a definitive feature of his artistic works which he says the visual forms of music embedded in stone and clay – the sculpturliness of music which is often not understood at the surface level of things as they are. A subjective awareness, a flash of spiritual insight, was common among all legendary musicians in India, whom he adored, it was also prevalent among, Western artists, like Rodin (The Thinking Man), Giacometti and Henry Moore and others. In fact, Florence, the city of artists, and art, became the meeting point of Sarbari Roy Chowdhury, Henri Moore and Giacometti in 1962.

To encapsulate this music festival, we have to turn back again to his words where he describes the pain associated with creation which he strived to express and preserve in his work- “pain like music, touches the soul and the heart and transforms an intellectual perception into an experience” – words that resonate with Sri Dilip Kumar Roy conversations with Romain Rolland in the early 20th century at Lucerne, where Rolland said that an artist must suffer like a Christ figure, that only differentiates from mundane lives, Tolstoy, Rembrandt, Beethoven are great examples of it.

-Joy Roy Choudhury