He glides on to the stage. The tall, handsome, elegant Abhay Rustum Sopori brought the richness of the Santoor tradition exclusive to his family to the Monte Musical Festival on Friday 3 rd March. He immediately strikes the keynote of his personality – humility – as he bows deeply and expresses his gratitude for the privilege of performing in the sacred Monte Chapel with his famous tabla player, Ustad Rafiuddin Sabri, on such an auspicious occasion.

He lovingly uncovers the Santoor and begins the task of tuning its 100 strings stretched across 43 bridges. As his expert hands busily rush around tuning the sensitive instrument, he enlightens the rapt audience about the origins of the instrument, the differences in construction and in performance styles, the innovations introduced by his family. The soft, gentle, authoritative voice, keenly involved in his art pulled us into an awareness of the musical possibilities of the instrument as delicate sounds wafted into our souls.

Glorious sonic textures spreading over melodious sequences of notes, some ringing out with bell-like clarity and others resounding with torrents of sound waves as the kalam, a small wooden striking device, throbbed in his hands impelling notes to take flight at lightening speed. Sometimes the kalam would bounce, dance and glide across the strings producing weird effects, sometimes the strike was more incisive, demanding.

The amazing range and variety of sounds forced the unbelieving ear that here was genius pushing the instrument to relish the extreme limits of its capabilities. Sopori’s eyes light up when he explains that his family has expanded the range of the instrument by two and a half octaves by redistributing the 100 strings stretched across 25 bridges with four strings each giving a span of three octaves to 43 bridges with lesser number of strings per bridge and with some laid out in the “open string concept” at the bottom that can be stretched manually to extend the range and produce other tonal effects. Certainly makes the playing more difficult and intricate? I ventured. Back came the broad accepting smile of an artist committed to his dedication and zeal for perfection.

Abhay Sopori is a double graduate in “Management” and “Computer Applications” besides being a National level hockey player. He is a recording artist with his albums “New Strings” and “Voice of Strings” receiving wide acclaim and is also the youngest classical musician to conduct orchestras and folk ensembles and compose music for tele-films, serials and documentaries. The signature tune for the Aaj Tak news channel and the appeal song Aao Kadam Badhayain spring from his talent. He can be heard as the playback singer in the award winning film Bub . We were carried away by his mellifluous singing voice as he sang and accompanied himself on the Santoor, a revival of the traditional santoor playing. He has furthered the popularity of the instrument by inventing, designing and introducing the “Sur Santoor”, a 30-stringed instrument.

This multifaceted talent has garnered prestigious awards at home and overseas, has participated in numerous festivals, conducted classes on Indian music at the University of Massachusetts and performed in the USA, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, etc. But for me and many others, his openness, simplicity, enthusiasm and gracious humility were inspirational and he opened the eyes and ears of addicted Western Classical music lovers to the richness, infinite variety, depth and beauty of Indian Classical music.