Bansuri Workshop in London with Pandit Ajay Prasanna

Pandit Ajay Prasanna teaches in London on Wednesday 19 August, the evening before he plays our London Ragas concert at the same venue. Four Grammy nominations, the Global Indian Music Award, a bansuri on the Gorillaz album Parvat (The Mountain), and a diary that leaves little room for teaching. He has made room for three hours here.

He carries the Banaras Gharana flute lineage of his father, Pandit Bholanath Prasanna, whose students include Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. That is the tradition you will sit in front of at The Tate Institute: bamboo, six holes, and a way of shaping breath into a raga handed down inside one family for three generations.

Open to everyone in the room

Children from around eight, adults who have never held an instrument, students mid-grade, and players with years behind them all sit together. This is how a baithak works: the beginner and the advanced player hear the same teaching and each takes what they can use. Bring your instrument if you have one, on any instrument at all. Bansuri, sitar, sarod, violin, guitar, piano, or voice: the material rests on musical ideas rather than one instrument's mechanics. No instrument and no experience needed to take part.

Parents, bring your children and sit with them rather than dropping them off. Plenty of parents who came to supervise end up playing.

What the evening covers

Pandit Prasanna opens with a short recital, then teaches for the rest of the evening.

• Breath and swara: how breath becomes tone on a bamboo flute, how the notes sit under the ear, and why a raga is more than a scale
• The alap: how a raga opens in free time, and what to listen for while it does
• Phrasing: meend, the glide joining two notes without restriking, and kan, the grace note that gives a phrase its accent
• Rhythm: the taal cycle underneath, finding the sam, and landing a phrase back on it

He hears participants play and gives one-to-one feedback before the close, and takes questions on technique, riyaz discipline and the tradition itself.

Included with every ticket

• Small-group teaching from a Banaras Gharana pandit
• One-to-one feedback on your playing
• Open Q&A on technique, practice and tradition
• Refreshments and drinks
• Certificate of participation
• Access to the KalaSudha learning community, with our music-focused calling system, notation tools and courses to continue with

Tickets

£40 for adults and £30 for students, until 6:00 PM on 12 August. After that the price rises to £50 and £35. The room holds thirty, so book early on both counts.

Wednesday 19 August 2026, 6:00 to 9:00 PM. Doors 5:30 PM. The Tate Institute, 1 Wythes Road, London E16 2DN.