The Classic Bagh Festival is a unique and intimate festival set within the grounds of Sundar Nursery, Delhi, formerly known as Azim Bagh, or Bagh-e-Azeem. The Classic Bagh festival is conscious of the challenges professional musicians and performers have faced through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and underlines the British Council’s aim to support artists by bringing them face-to-face with audiences again.
Part of the British Council’s Festivals for the Future programme that features a series of UK-India musical collaborations between Jodhpur RIFF, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Classic Bagh festival reflects support for India's emerging festivals sector, developing crucial skillsets and strengthening India’s creative economy and art and culture festivals, in partnership with the UK.
Designed as an immersive experience, the 1-day, free ‘Classic Bagh Festival’ is scheduled for 21 March at the Sunder Nursery in New Delhi. Presented by @JodhpurRIFF & @inBritish with #AKTC, the festival supports artists impacted by Covid-19.
Read more: https://t.co/NIDaJeYFOb pic.twitter.com/H7s1SocL4L— AKDN (@akdn) March 17, 2021
Designed as an immersive and environmentally conscious experience, the free one-day festival has been developed as a site-conscientious response to the luscious green setting of Sunder Nursery and its broader location within Nizamuddin, celebrating Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s vision of pluralism and kindness. Split into three periods, the Classic Bagh festival will open with a lakeside dawn chorus (6:00 am-9:00 am) of vocal recitals from the Hindustani, Sufi, Bhajan, Shabad and Qawwali traditions by the remarkable singers Smita Bellur and Jasleen Kaur Monga.
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Later in the morning (9:30 am-1:30 pm), in the heritage monument-straddled garden north of the Amphitheatre, a short set by the Langa Ensemble will flag off the session, followed by Delhi’s own renowned Qawwali singer Dhruv Sangari ‘Bilal Chishti’ followed by a series of classical-sufi-folk covers by emerging Delhi artist Bawari Basanti.
Catch a glimpse of Smita Rao Bellur's mastery over Sufi renditions live at @sundernursery on 21st March at Classic Bagh! For more details, visit our Instagram page https://t.co/y8L2H0OEFK Classic Bagh is brought to you by Jodhpur RIFF & @inBritish in association with @AKF_India
— Jodhpur RIFF (@JodhpurRIFF) March 18, 2021
The festival will draw to a close later in the evening (6:00 pm-10:00 pm) with an eclectic set - a special Jangda recital from the Manganiyar tradition led by Barkat Khan, ghazals by emerging artist Sraboni Chaudhary and soul-stirring performances by renowned masters Ustad Saeed Zafar Khan, now the Khalifa of the Dilli Gharana, and Qawaal Bachchey Warsi Brothers, performing in Sunder Nursery’s amphitheatre.
Designed as an immersive experience, the 1-day, free ‘Classic Bagh Festival’ is scheduled for 21 March at the Sunder Nursery in New Delhi. Presented by @JodhpurRIFF & @inBritish with #AKTC, the festival supports artists impacted by Covid-19.
Read more: https://t.co/KxpTiDUzFO pic.twitter.com/o6UcYiIQ2d— AKDN (@akdn) March 15, 2021
With Holi just around the corner, a special focus on ‘Rang’ will also transcend through the evening’s repertoire. Both morning performance sets will be open to anyone visiting Sunder Nursery, encouraging new audiences to interact with the especially curated music. Extra care is being taken to design the festival experience from a COVID-19 safety point of view, with mandatory masking, socially distant seating and capping seated audiences to less than half the capacity of the amphitheatre for the evening performance.
(Source: Agencies)
