About
Niladri Kumar is one of the most popular sitar players and composers of his generation. The son and disciple of the sitar player Pandit Kartick Kumar, himself a senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, he began learning at the age of four and gave his first public performance at six. He is also the inventor of the zitar, an electric sitar he devised to reach wider audiences.
Kumar has collaborated with Zakir Hussain, John McLaughlin, Jonas Hellborg and others, and composed for Hindi cinema with A.R. Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Pritam, including the widely loved Life in a... Metro songs on the zitar. He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi's Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar and an MTV Immies award, and continues to perform classical recitals and fusion worldwide, including a return to the Darbar Festival in 2025.
The artistry
Kumar has an extraordinary technical command of the sitar, with dextrous double stops, whispering string bends and rapid taans. He moves between deeply traditional Hindustani recitals and his electric zitar, blending rock, electronic and lounge textures without losing the raga's core.
Kumar gives a host range: a pure classical sitar recital, or a high-energy zitar and fusion set with strong youth appeal. His film and collaboration profile widens his draw well beyond the classical core. [Atlas Assessment]
A sitar virtuoso who has drawn younger audiences to Indian classical music through the zitar and cross-genre work, while sustaining a serious classical practice.