Pravah Khandekar is vocalist, composer and percussionist, originally trained in the lineage of Dhrupad and Hindustani Music. His work engages closely with contemporary jazz and Middle Eastern styles, and he extensively collaborates with artists from the SilkRoad Ensemble, Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. Pravah’s mother is his first Guru, following which he was initiated in Dagar-Vaani Dhrupad by late Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar. He grew up in the mentorship of Vidushi Veena Sahasrabudde, Vidushi Ashwini Bhide and Shruti Sadolikar Katkar.
Dhrupad continues to inform his practice, and is presently mentored by Pandit Uday Bhawalkar.
Notable Performances
Club Passim Show with Ezra Rudel and Bahar Badieitabar | Club Passim, Boston, USA
The Stable with Ezra Rudel and Beth Ann Jones | Boston, MA, USA
Trespassers Collective with Ezra Rudel, Joolz, Snehesh Nag and Elle | Harvard University
Unheard Sounds, with Chao Tian and Ezra Rudel | Chapel of 1959, Harvard University
Global Musicians Workshop with Silk Road, 2024, with Kala Ramnath, Jamey Haddad and Edward Perez | Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston, MA, USA
Sonic Weathers, in collaboration with MIT Media Lab | Kirkland Galllery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Opening performance, Harvard India Conference, 2023 | Kennedy School, Harvard University
Opening performance for President Claudine Gay’s Inauguration | Harvard Yard, Harvard University
Global Voices: Cambridge, 2023 | Swedenborg Chapel, Harvard University, Supported by Massachusetts Cultural Council
Swedenbord Chapel, 2023 | Harvard University
Elsewhere, 2023 | Harvard Graduate School of Design
Boston Meshk Turkish Ensemble, 2023 | Holden Chapel, Harvard University
World Music Collective, Spring 2023 | Harvard University
World Music Collective, Fall, 2022 | Harvard University
Aaeen, 2022 | A Musical directed by Atul Kumar, Prithvi Theatre, India
Liminoid, 2021 | Experimental Piece with Nepalese Folk Artists, Mustang, Nepal
Listening to Spaces, 2019 | Sir JJ School of Arts, Mumbai, India
Suspension of Disbelief, 2019 | Experimental theatrical work with Ratna Pathak Shah, Sir JJ School of Arts, Mumbai, India
Kafan, 2017 | Adaptations from Munshi PremChand, IIT Kanpur, India
Naad Bhed, 2014 | All India Radio, Doordarshan, Lucknow, India
Dhrupad Vocal invocation, 2014 | SPIC MACAY National Convention, IIT Kanpur, India
Meet my current collaborators
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Ezra Rudel is a trumpet player and composer from Cambridge, MA, USA, inspired by friends and folk traditions from around the world. They are obsessed with the relationship between music and language and strive to imitate the rawness and honesty of the human voice through their trumpet playing. In addition to holding a Bachelor’s of Music in Jazz Composition from Oberlin Conservatory, Ezra has trained in New Orleans brass band music, other styles of Black American Music, klezmer, Balkan, Turkish, and Arabic music. They are currently travelling the world, attending residencies such as Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop and JMI’s Ethno Global Music Gatherings, performing with ensembles like the Trespassers Collective and Lenny’s Funk Club, and striving to learn from everyone they meet.
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Malik Schilling is a hand percussionist whose music moves fluidly across borders - geographical, cultural, and sonic. Having performed at festivals such as the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück, Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezKanada, and the Gnaoua & World Music Festival Essaouira, his work reflects a lifelong engagement with musical traditions from West and Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. He has collaborated and shared the stage with artists including Manfred Leuchter, Sanaz Zaresani, Mohamed Najem, Mehrnam Rastegari, Muaz Ceyhan, Naci Oğuz, Salman Gambarov, and members of the Berklee and New England Conservatory communities, performing in cities such as Boston, New York, İstanbul, Baku, and Cambridge (MA).
In his performances - from intimate improvisations with his ensemble Pyramid Quartet to large-scale intercultural projects like the Caravan Orchestra and the YAM Ensemble - rhythmic vocabularies of folk traditions meet the open, exploratory spirit of contemporary improvised music. Each concert becomes a space for collective creation, where structure and spontaneity intertwine and new forms emerge through listening and interaction. Fascinated by texture, pulse, and the physicality of sound, Malik brings a vivid sense of presence to the stage - inviting audiences into an evolving dialogue between tradition and innovation, intimacy and intensity.
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Taiwanese-American artist JOOLZ 馬 恖 恖’s transdisciplinary, cross-cultural, collaborative projects seek and shake the soul. The founder, artistic director, co-writer, filmmaker and musician of the award-winning collective-initiative S E A S, she engages with diverse artists, scientists, communities, environments, and wildlife to unearth new understandings about our planet, the climate crisis, on both localized and global scales; and ignite vital human reconnection to Earth. From public panels with scientists to immersive performances, films, and exhibitions, she has led S E A S to Carnegie Hall, Consulat général de France à New York, Heritage Space, The New School, and global screenings Rise, Awaken and Isostasy. Partnering sustainability advocates including U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Chasing Coral, New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, MIT Media Lab’s Open Ocean, Caroga Lake Inter-Arts Symposium, and Asian American Arts Alliance, JOOLZ contributes regularly in biodiversity conservation and community efforts concerning ecological ethics, encouraging all to consider the roles we play on the journey towards our planet’s sustainability.
A citizen-artist, JOOLZ brightens her communities through eclectic roles. In addition to volunteering as a Gluck Fellow (New York City) and research contributions as a Fulbright Scholar (Paris, France), she has taught music at Harvard University, Music-Ally, Tonerow, Avenues: The World School; creative writing at Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies; and created and led collaborative arts courses and programs at Stanford University. She is a returning Speaker and Teaching Artist at Caroga Lake Music Festival, as well as transdisciplinary performer at Silkroad Global Musician Workshop. Today, she leads Global Voices Live—a fresh music series based in Cambridge, MA that offers global music and improvisation workshops, jam sessions, and outdoor concerts featuring international musicians. Supported bythe Massachusetts Cultural Council, their recent work has sparked the Mehfil series, a recurring gathering of musicians and artists who travel and perform live improvisation with different communities, revolutionizing how people engage in music-making and challenging the distinction between performer and audience.
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Chao Tian is a boundary-breaking Chinese dulcimer artist, improviser, and sonic thinker whose music unfolds across tradition, experimentation, and diasporic imagination. Trained in the classical lineage of the Chinese dulcimer since the age of five, she now bends that legacy into new shapes—treating the instrument not as a symbol, but as a living, questioning voice.
Her creative work draws from intercultural collaboration and critical listening, engaging with sound as both form and encounter. She is the founder of Unheard Sounds, an ongoing initiative that explores how immigrant artists reshape artistic language through tension, resonance, and reinvention. Her signature project, From China to Appalachia, created with two-time GRAMMY winners Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, reimagines the meeting point between Chinese and American folk traditions through dialogue and shared musical roots. She also leads the cross-genre ensemble Always Folk and co-creates Dong Xi (East–West) with world percussionist Tom Teasley.
A former member of China’s renowned 12 Girls Band, Chao has performed across more than 30 countries. Her U.S. journey began as the first Chinese artist-in-residence at Strathmore Music Center (2017–2018), where she initiated bold collaborations across genres. She has since been a fellow at Art Omi, a NextLOOK artist at the University of Maryland, aMusician Changemaker Accelerator fellow (2024), and a GRAMMY U mentor (2025)
