ArtistInfo

Prasanna

Band,
Musician / Composer of Rock and Latin
A.k.a. Prasanna Ramaswamy

As a guitarist and composer, Prasanna's prolific body or work is as diverse as it is integrated. This includes over eleven Carnatic albums, collaborative CDs Tirtha with Vijay Iyer and Nitin Mitta, Raga Bop Trio with Steve Smith and saxophonist George Brooks, the Carnatic/rock Jimi Hendrix tribute album Electric Ganesha Land, the jazz fusion album Be the Change featuring several Grammy Award winning artists from the jazz world, an eclectic solo guitar album Peaceful, the triple guitar project Guitars with the Belgian band Aka Moon, and numerous guitar tracks on Indian film soundtracks for composers such as A.R. Rahman, Illayaraja and others. He has composed original music for documentaries, feature films, and contemporary dance theater. He has performed and recorded with jazz/fusion artists Joe Lovano, Esperanza Spalding, Larry Coryell, Anthony Jackson, Omar Hakim, Victor Wooten, Airto Moreira, Alphonso Johnson, Aka Moon, Trilok Gurtu, Steve Smith etc and Indian musicians A.R.Rahman, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Illayaraja, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Ustad Shujaat Khan, Dr. L. Subramaniam, Umayalpuram Sivaraman, Trichy Sankaran and others. With an engineering degree in Naval Architecture from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, he went on to pursue his passion for music and graduated Magna-Cum-Laude with honors from the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Carnatic Music for 2003 award from H.H. Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, and the Berklee College of Music Guitar Achievement and Music-Composition Achievement Awards among others. Prasanna founded Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music in 2009 and served as its President for close to 5 years.

Members

	Dave Douglas tr *1963 US
	David Binney as *1961 US
	Vijay Iyer p *1971 US
	Rodney Holmes dr US
	Rudresh Mahanthappa as *1971 US
	Mike Pope eb, b US
	Mauricio Zottarelli dr BR
	Natalie John voc
	Shalini Lakshmi voc
	Bill Ermson eb