ITC Sangeet Sammelan

ITC's association with Indian Classical music began with the ITC Sangeet Sammelan conducted in Delhi in 1971. This Sammelan also instituted a substantial cash award to be given to one of the oldest living musicians of stature. The Sammelan took Delhi by storm and went on to become an annual event in the city’s calendar. Consistently featuring the reigning monarchs of the music world, this annual Sammelan added to the culture-scape of our country’s capital.

ITC Pioneers Corporate Patronage of Music

Taking this successful initiative forward, ITC then went on to pioneer the corporate patronage of Hindustani classical music, which was suffering from the withdrawal of royal support.

The loss of royal patronage had thrown the arts open to public mercy. Classical music, in its pure form, is fundamentally a complex study and therefore, cannot come within the reach of the uninitiated. As a result, serious music suffered. Pandit V N Bhatkhande and Pandit V D Paluskar tried to bring classical music within the reach of the middle class intelligentsia, in a systematic way, by introducing music education in universities and institutions. But such institutions rarely succeeded in producing performers of note. History reveals that the only effective method to impart the complex techniques of any art form, especially music, is through long years of close involvement between teacher and student.

During the seventies, ITC envisioned that the Company could play a major role to preserve and propagate the rich Indian musical heritage. The ITC Sangeet Research Academy was created in 1977 as an independent Public Charitable Trust with the aim of stemming the process of gradual dissipation in traditional forms and techniques of Indian classical music.

ITC aspired to go beyond merely nurturing and propagating the priceless tradition of Hindustani Classical Music. In creating ITC Sangeet Research Academy at Kolkata, ITC's endeavour was to establish a modern 'Gurukul' and revive the traditional 'Guru-Shishya Parampara'. It was modelled as an institution which epitomised the best of Hindustani Classical Music teaching and would be professionally run.