Sujay Dighe, Ricky Mathew, and Shakir A. Khan

Spiral Music presents acoustic music every Wednesday evening at the base of the Museum’s spiral staircase. Artists who specialize in music from the Himalayas and South Asia are invited to forge a connection between their music and the art in the galleries.

About the Musicians

Sujay Dighe (tabla) grew up among a family of musicians in Maryland and had a passion for music at a very young age. His first guru was Sundesh Sreenivas, and after three years Dighe began lessons with his father, Shri Kishore Dighe. Under his father and Sreenivas’ guidance, Dighe had become a highly respectable tabla player at only twenty-one years old. After years of hard work, Sujay became a volunteer teacher at the Chinmaya Mission Washington Regional Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 2007. He continues to spend his weekends there, teaching tabla to children of all ages.

Ricky Mathew (tabla) developed an interest in tabla at a very young age. He was trained initially by Kishore Dighe, who is a well-known tabla player and teacher in the Washington Metropolitan area, and then followed in the footsteps of his current teacher, Sujay Dighe. Mathew has accompanied artists who play both classical and fusion music and has performed in India and New York.

Shakir A. Khan (sitar) started his musical training with his family at the age of six. He came to the United States as a young boy and started to intersperse his music with Western music. He has done many intercultural concerts all over the United States and India. As a child Shakir received intense musical training from his father, Ayub Khan. He then started his sitar training under the tutelage of Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan and continued to study the Pandit Nikhil Banerjee and Ustad Abdul Halim Jaffer styles. He also currently studies rhythm and tabla under Ustad Kadar Khan. Shakir Khan has performed at NYU, Manhattan School of Music, and Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. He works with the Kalavant Center for music and dance as a sitar instructor and artistic director.