Priya Patel

Priya Banerjee arrived in Paris in 1980 on a fellowship to study composition at the Conservatoire and found the city more interested in her origins than her technique. She used that interest strategically. Her early performances presented a version of Indian classical music that was authentic enough to satisfy the audience and subversive enough to satisfy herself. Over time the subversion became the point. Her later work is harder to place and more rewarding for it — orchestral in scope, rhythmically Indian, harmonically European.