About
Priyanka Barve, born 10 April 1990 in Pune, is an accomplished playback singer and actress, most active in Marathi music and theatre and also singing in Hindi and other languages. She comes from a distinguished musical family, the granddaughter of veteran vocalists Pandit Padmakar Barve and Malati Pande-Barve, who trained her in classical music, and is married to the sarod player Sarang Kulkarni.
Barve won a Maharashtra State Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer and has played leading roles in the natya-sangeet revivals Sangeet Manapman and Sangeet Sanshay Kallol opposite Rahul Deshpande, as well as Anarkali in the Broadway-style Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical. She has sung for films from Panipat to Me Vasantrao, runs the PriyaRang Project with her husband, and continues to release Marathi singles and perform widely.
The artistry
Barve sings with a clear, expressive voice grounded in Hindustani classical training, moving between natya-sangeet, Marathi film songs, bhakti sangeet and ghazal, in which she is admired for her Urdu diction. On stage she combines singing with a lead performer's presence.
Barve offers a host a natya-sangeet or Marathi classical evening, a musical-theatre lead, or a semi-classical concert, with a strong regional following. Well suited to heritage and theatre programming, especially in Maharashtra. [Atlas Assessment]
A leading younger voice of Marathi music and a key performer in the contemporary revival of natya-sangeet.