Ali Akbar College of Music
Musician--sitarist, composer, and educator
San Francisco, CA USA
Arjun K. Verma is an internationally acclaimed Indian-American sitarist and composer. Beginning with his father, Roop Verma, and continuing with the legendary Ali Akbar Khan and his son Alam Khan, Arjun’s meticulous training has imbued him with a rich musicality that encompasses both the profound majesty and the exhilaration of North Indian classical music.
Hailed by the New York Times as a “fine sitarist,” Arjun shares the jewels of his cultural heritage in a manner that is fresh, modern, and relevant, while maintaining a high standard of traditional integrity.
Arjun has performed at international venues including the United Nations, the Fillmore, Prague Castle, and on the NBC TV network, collaborating with a diverse host of musicians including the London Symphony Orchestra, Swapan Chaudhuri, Alam Khan, Bob Weir (Grateful Dead), the St. Louis Symphony, and GRAMMY-winning pianist and arranger John Beasley.
Arjun’s performance repertoire has stretched the limits of the sitar as an instrument, and his recording and composing work has applied Indian classical music effectively for TV, opera, and documentary film. In 2023, Arjun published The Resonance Between—a groundbreaking East-West collaboration led by sarodist Alam Khan. The album received international praise, hailed as "a genuinely revolutionary listening experience” (Cultured Focus); “remarkable. . . simply excellent music” (Popmatters); "beautiful. . .transcends language, definition, boundaries” (The Hindu);
and was chosen as one of the “Best Albums of 2023” by Songlines Magazine.
Arjun is the recipient of a Mosaic America commissioning grant (2020), a Creative Work Fund grant (2018—Haas Foundation), and a Shenson Fellowship (2007—San Francisco Foundation).
Offer
Systemic change and planet-wide recovery requires us first to restore a deeply-felt sense of interconnectedness and harmony across all levels of experience—from our own bodies, hearts, and minds, to the social and political realms, all the way up to a sense of interdependence with the entire ecological system of Planet Earth. Some of the most powerful methods to achieve this are based on traditional arts and practices from our ancient cultures. Indian Classical music is one such potent practice, having evolved through distillation over millennia of the effects of particular musical sounds on the human body, heart, and mind. Arjun has spent a lifetime honing this artistic practice, with a particular emphasis on its restorative effects, learning first with his father, Roop Verma, who was not only a sitarist but also an expert on Nada Yoga (traditional sound meditation), and then with the legend Ali Akbar Khan himself, considered by many to be the best musician in the world, particularly renowned for his profound ability to create deeply healing music. Arjun then continued his training with Ali Akbar Khan’s son, Alam Khan—a global ambassador of sarod, recognized internationally as the heir of Ali Akbar Khan’s musical legacy. Once a felt sense of interconnectedness is nurtured, Arts of all types can then be a means for bringing people together in harmony, and finally can be a medium for amplifying solution-focused messages that emerge from collaborative global problem-solving. Arjun has spent decades cultivating not only his ability to be an ambassador of Indian Classical Music, but also building broad skills around technology, cross-cultural collaboration, and environmental change. During a career of several years as a senior product manager at two sustainability and tech firms, Arjun helped build cutting-edge software tools to deliver, quantify and report on sustainability actions at top San Francisco Bay Area firms, and created an early AI optimization, analysis, and communication platform for sales teams on the Salesforce platform. After retiring from the technology world, Arjun has woven his diverse skill set into his professional music career, using his artistic platform in support of peace-building, humanitarian, and environmental causes, including a performance at the United Nations in Geneva to spread a message of peace at the Forum des Jeunes; numerous benefit concerts and campaigns to support underprivileged education in India, earthquake relief in Nepal, covid-19 relief in India, and indigenous land-back purchases in Colombia. Arjun has also done many genre-crossing recordings and performances to spread a message of intercultural collaboration and harmony, including an album with multiple GRAMMY-winning jazz artist John Beasley; a collaboration with Alam Khan and Del Sol Quartet on the groundbreaking album, The Resonance Between, chosen by Songlines Magazine as one of the “Best Albums of 2023;” and a forthcoming film using music and animation to spread a message of ecological and personal recovery, healing, hope, and transformation. Arjun endeavors to offer his gifts to support all three of these stages of change—wielding the potent tool of Indian Classical Music to restore a sense of interconnectedness and well-being; deploying his natural abilities as an intercultural ambassador to facilitate deep collaboration and connection in groups; and finally using his artistic voice to spread the message of powerful solutions to our shared challenges on a global scale.
NEED
The need for long-term project partners to help strategize on, fund, and execute big contemporary projects using music to support global change. The need for patrons committed to steadily supporting Traditional cultural treasures like Indian Classical Music, in its performance as well as educational contexts.
Call-to-Action
The arts are not only at the heart of every culture, but they are essential in the spreading and amplification of key messages to humanity. We are in a time where we must pair futuristic technology with traditional wisdom to meet the challenges facing humanity. The traditional arts, like Indian Classical Music, help us to restore a deep sense of connection and wellbeing both within our personal as well as societal ecosystems. In its contemporary incarnations, this deep music can become a core part of the song of humanity as it seeks to come together to reach a new vision of society. Support the leveraging of this powerful artistic tool by becoming part of cutting-edge projects to bring this potent music to the world, in any capacity that suits you—as a patron, strategist, producer, technical expert, collaborating artist, or business leader.
