Niladri Kumar is an renowned sitarist. He was born on 1973 to Mr. Karthik Kumar he is also a well-known sitarist and he is a follower of "Ravi shankar". Niladri started learning sitar with his father at a very young age of four. His first performance was at the age of six at "Aurobindo Ashram" in Puducherry. He began his career as a music director with the "Laxmikant-Pyarelal". Later he was part of masters of the percussion tour alongside "Zahir Hussain". He worked with "Jonas Hellborg" and "Selvaganesh" on there album of "Kali's Son" and with "John McLaughlin" on the album "Floating point". He also worked with many well-known music directors like "AR Rahman", "Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy" and "Pritam" and many others.
Niladri has created a unique Instrument called "Zitar" which is a combination if sitar and guitar. The concept initiated from a traveling sitar which was modified by him and made him to create a guitar sound of it. He reduced the number of strings on the instrument from 20 to 5 and he also added an electric pickup inside the instrument so that it would sound more like guitar. He composed an album using this "Zitar" and got release in the year 2008. He wrote first tracks for the album Priority in the year 2003. He improvised the tracks by adding components from various genres such as "Rock", "Electronic" and Lounge".
He has given many live concerts in all major places and done many albums some of them are like "De Stress Revives", "Aura of Tranquility", "Hiyar Majhe", "Magical Sounds of Sitar" and many others.
Niladri won the prestigious "Sangeet Natak Academy's Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar" in March of 2007. He also won the "MTV Immies Award" for the best Classical and fusion Instrumental for his albums.
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