Mumbai's National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) will witness a performance by Kazakhstan's virtuoso violinist Marat Bisengaliev today.
The event has been organised to celebrate the contribution of one of the founders of the NCPA, Dr. Jamshed. J. Bhabha, who was himself a great enthusiast of western classical music.
The programme will begin with a performance by NCPA special music training program students under the guidance of Marat Bisengaliev, the Music Director of the Symphony Orchestra of India, India's first fully professional orchestra.
Described by The Times newspaper of London as a "brilliant violin soloist", Marat Bisengaliev has also been designated "a Latter-day Ysaye" by the American journal Fanfare.
Born in Kazakhstan in 1962, Bisengaliev made a startling debut at the age of nine. He later studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow with two of the legendary names in violin tuition: Boris Belinki and Valery Klimov.
Bisengaliev was a prize winner in 1988 at the Leipzig International Bach Competition, and in 1991, won the first prize at the International Nicanor Zabaleta Competition in Spain, also receiving the special virtuoso prize for the most outstanding performance of the competition.
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In 2003 Bisengaliev founded the West Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra.
In August 2006, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) formed The Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI), the country's first fully professional symphony orchestra, offering a series of concerts in Mumbai over the course of two seasons each year, in September and February.
The orchestra has also begun to tour nationally and to take music into communities in order to enthuse new and young audiences around India.
The SOI was founded by the NCPA Chairman, Khushroo N Suntook and Marat Bisengaliev, who serves as the orchestra's Music Director.
Players are recruited from an international field, a core of instrumentalists who are resident at the NCPA all year round. Many of the principal players are also teachers, and the orchestra places a great emphasis on developing musical potential within India.
In 2008 and 2009, Bisengaliev was named "Man of the Year"in 2009, and "Man of the Decade" in 2010 in Kazakhstan, after gaining the most votes in a popular poll.
Opening its doors to the world in 1969, the NCPA became the first multi-venue and multi-purpose cultural centre to be built in South Asia. Vibrant and diverse, the NCPA today is recognized by artistes, patrons and media alike as India's premier performing arts institution.
The centre has provided a platform to showcase national as well as international performing arts. In order to preserve, promote and perpetuate performing arts, the NCPA also engages in several training, educational, research initiatives and outreach activities.
The NCPA presents over 600 events each year across Indian music, international music, theatre and film, dance, literature, visual arts and pPhotography.
Each of these art forms are backed by knowledgeable heads of programming, who curate events and festivals representative of everything from classical to contemporary throughout the year.
The NCPA produces its own programmes and also collaborates with leading cultural promoters from around the world to present superlative creations of art.