Rhiannon is a sitarist from the Maihar Gharana. She performs worldwide, and is also a composer, arranger, sitar instructor, and music transcriptionist. Rhiannon recently toured as a guest composer and performer with Pop-Up Magazine, a live literary and multi-media production. She has performed at venues such as the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Brooklyn, and the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC. In 2019/2020, Rhiannon was the artist-in-residence with the Gandhi Ashram School Orchestra in Kalimpong, West Bengal. She taught traditional aspects of raga and tala, as well as excerpts from her original orchestral composition, which is based on a melding of North Indian and Western Classical Music.
Rhiannon has transcribed several of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan’s compositions, translating them into western notation for the Ali Akbar College of Music’s monthly meetings of “The Works of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan.” She has also arranged his pieces for high school band.
This fall, Rhiannon will be traveling to Scotland for a collaboration exploring the intersection between Indian Classical and Scottish Traditional music. This project has personal meaning; combining the culture which is most familiar to her, with the unfamiliar one of her ancestors. As a part of this endeavor, she will also be studying the Gàidhlig language.
Rhiannon studies at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael with Alam Khan, son and disciple of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, and with Arjun Verma, also a disciple of Khansahib’s. She received her BFA in Music Composition from California Institute of the Arts in 2015.
Rhiannon’s playing is influenced by Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, and her teachers, Alam Khan and Arjun Verma. She also draws inspiration from her study of Western Classical music and Javanese and Balinese Gamelan.
After an introductory Hindustani Classical Music class at Colby College, which rekindled a long-standing desire to learn to play the sitar, Rhiannon was fortunate enough to have a colleauge introduce her to Pandit Shubhendra Rao, a disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar. She spent six months studying with him in New Delhi, immersed in the music and culture, and through her studies, she discovered a passion for composing, as well as for playing.
Upon her return, Rhiannon transferred to California Institute of the Arts. At CalArts, Rhiannon studied sitar with Ustad Aashish Khan, tala with Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and Randy Gloss, composition with performer/composers Vinny Golia, Michael Fink, and Neelamjit Dhillon, Javanese gamelan with Pak Djoko Walujo, and Balinese gamelan with Pak Nyoman Wenten. At Calarts, she continued to develop her unique composition style, inspired by her study of North Indian Classical music, Western Classical music, Jazz, Balinese Gamelan, and Javanese Gamelan.