Sandeep Das plays the tabla on the world stage as one of the leading masters of the art, but what is his own first introduction to the drum set foundational to Indian music? There it sat on the family coffee table at home in India; his 6-year-eyes landed on them and he had to ask, “What are those?”

His father had gotten a complaint from his school, that the boy was disturbing classes with his tap-tap-tapping on the desk. When asked to stop, the tap-tap-tapping migrated to his feet. Maybe he should be taken to a doctor. “I was in the room and I remember being very scared. Doctors meant injections and whatnot,” Das recalled.

“I was very lucky that I was born to a very smart father.” His dad wasn’t upset but smiling when he got home. The boy asked about that coffee table curiosity. “He said, ‘That’s a tabla and your lessons start tonight.’” The tabla is a set of two drums — the right one smaller and tunable and the large left one, basically the bass. The instrument can be both melodic and rhythmic and, with the right training Das said, it can speak. In his hands, it can sing.

“I can’t say I fell in love right away,” he said, “but I still remember the smell of my first pair of drums.” He looked forward to playing it. “You know, you are a little kid, so you don’t know if this is for you or not. But definitely, there was an attraction and I guess there was destiny involved.”

After learning from his first tabla guru in his hometown, his father realized he had the potential to learn from a master. “He took me to my ultimate guru, from whom I learned by living with him, in his house, for 12 years, learning the tabla.” In the traditional way, he was taught music as a way of life, by the legendary Kishan Maharaj.

Now an internationally acclaimed virtuoso, Grammy winner, Silkroad Ensemble member and Guggenheim Fellow who collaborates with fellow world-class musicians and guests with iconic orchestras, Das has taken the principal percussion instrument of Indian classical music into new horizons in world music.

As the guest artist with the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra in its March 8 “Vibrant Colors” Bravo concert, Das, seated atop a rug-covered platform out front, brings the percussive language of the tabla to incredible, vivid life in Concerto for Tabla and Orchestra, a work by contemporary Sri Lankan-born Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne. This concert centerpiece is paired with Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in the second half for an evening that celebrates art, inspiration and influences from the other half of the world.

Das grew up learning Indian classical music and has played those concerts around the world since 1990. Meeting cellist Yo-Yo Ma — “one of the greatest human beings of our time,” Das said — exposed him to the world of Western classical music. “Before then, I didn’t know what an orchestra was, I had never played with one.”

Dinuk Wijeratne was still student at Juilliard when Das first met him, through a Carnegie Hall program pairing young composers with master musicians. “Dinuk was one of the composers chosen by Carnegie and the Silkroad Project, started by Yo-Yo Ma, to write a piece for cello, tabla and strings, and he wrote a piece called Karmic Blue, which was so beautiful, so good that I never forgot it.” In those pre-cell phone/internet/email days, they worked on the piece at Tanglewood, Das played the concert at Carnegie Hall, left for India and that was that. For years, no contact.

Das moved to the United States in 2012 (he now lives in Newton, Massachusetts, outside Boston), and asked one of the ensemble’s violinists if he remembered that Sri Lankan composer who was so good? His friend chuckled. He’d had coffee with Wijeratne the night before in Toronto, and the composer had asked about Das! He was writing a tabla concerto and wanted to talk to Das about it.

“We connected again, and it’s history since then. I’ve played this concerto all around the world and it is definitely, without hesitation, one of the best pieces ever written for me and my instrument.”

Wijeratne’s concerto showcases the three roles of the tabla — as an accompanying instrument, as a melodic instrument and as a solo instrument along with Das’ vocalizations. “It actually takes you on a journey in exploring the three different facets of this instrument,” Das said. In Indian classical music and the oral tradition of his training, there is no note-by-note playbook.

“If you just write every single note I’m supposed to play, you have already chained me down. You have already suffocated me. Yet on the other hand… sometimes they just write something and give me free passages like, ‘You can do whatever you want,’ and it’s not challenging enough.

“Dinuk has been able to write a piece without chaining me down. He lets me soar, fly, sculpt, paint, yet with responsibilities intact. So, it’s a beautiful piece, which will give people a completely different perspective of percussion and symphony, especially percussion that’s not from a Western classical background, and how beautiful it can be.”

From his own perspective, there is much to enjoy about all of it. “The first movement is amazing and has a great ending. My heart melts every time I play the second movement.” In the third movement, “I’m constantly pushing my boundaries, because I have the liberty to take what he has written but then take it to another level every time I’m playing it.

“I look forward to it!”

+

NEW Venue:

Jackson Academy Performing Arts Center — 4908 Ridgewood Road, Jackson, MS 39211 — is the location for MSO’s “Vibrant Colors” concert at 7:30 p.m. on March 8, 2025. Seating is general admission with a reserved section for Conductor, Connoisseur, and Loge season ticket holders.