Seattle Tabla Institute 4th year ofNEA Awards total $40K

Seattle, WA,  March 2019

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recently announced another $10,000 Art Works award to the Seattle Tabla Institute (ACIT Seattle), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting tabla drumming and Hindustani music through educational programs, concerts and classes.  This is the 4th year in a row that ACIT has receive the Artworks grant.

The funding will help to support ACIT’s 2019 Access to Ustads Project, an effort to bring four Indian maestros to western Washington for public performances and to provide accompanying educational workshops and lectures.

 "Musicians, music lovers and music students all over Seattle will benefit from the continued support of the NEA," said Executive Director, Ravi Albright,  "For the third year in a row, the Access to Ustads Project will bring some of the best musicians of the Hindustani genre from around the world to the Pacific Northwest. The sustained support of the Artworks grant feed these important cultural traditions that enrich our diverse communities and bring us together by learning and experiencing art."

 "We are really looking forward to the amazing performances coming up in the Spring and Fall with these artists throughout King County. It's really an honor to be able to share Hindustani music of this caliber in our region and its a great opportunity for music students of all styles and the public to experience something out of the box, as the Hindustani tradition is vibrant and complex, improvised and structured at the same time, with some similar structural elements of Jazz, but painted by the musical colors of the ancient taala [rhythm] and raga [melody] system."