Twenty five years ago, ITC Sangeet Research Academy was created with a vision of nurturing and propagating Hindustani Classical music. This dream has matured over the last two and a half decades and has given birth to one of the premier music institutions of India. It is perhaps the only one of its kind where the pupil lives under the same roof with his teacher and undergoes rigorous training for several years in the true guru shishya parampara. ITC SRA is justifiably proud of the maestros that it has produced such as Ajoy Chakraborty, Rashid Khan, Mashkoor Ali Khan, Arun Bhaduri, Shubhra Guha etc. Its coveted panel of gurus include, in addition to some of these maestros, Ulhas Kashalkar, Buddhadev Das Gupta, Abdul Rashid Khan, A Kanan and Malabika Kanan.

Ideally the shishya would completely surrender at the guru's feet, but the new age shishya has many a query and is looking for a logical end to all his questions. Keeping in mind the present situation, in addition to its annual conferences, ITC SRA aims at organizing seminars, workshops and lecture demonstrations throughout the year. It will bring together noted musicians and musicologists of the country to gather information on a holistic basis and disseminate such information among its scholars in an objective logical manner. It also will publish the proceedings of these seminars for wider dissemination.

To start off our 25th year celebrations, we organized a seminar, Rag Parikrama on the 7th, 8th and 9th of August 2003. It was unique in its kind as it not only discussed all varieties of ragas but also addressed the historical perspective of these ragas, their presence in different forms of music and their significance in the world of music, especially among the musicians of future generations.