PIANIST & LEAD GUITARIST AT TAJ GROUP OF HOTELS AND RESORTS
Merlin Dsouza is a professional keyboardist based out of Mumbai, Maharashtra. Her degree from the Trinity College of Music, London has given her an exposure the magic of music. This talented lady has composed music for Bollywood films, theatre and for advertisements. Touring the world was inevitable since she loves her keyboard so much. She has played at premiere jazz clubs such as Blue Note in NYC and the Jazz Bar at Sydney Opera House. The band for the Duke Ellington Centenary Concert at India’s premiere concert hall was led by her.
Clinton Charles D'cunha is a professional keyboardist based out of the finance capital of India, Mumbai. He began playing the piano at an early age of five years. He was taught the basic fundamentals of music by his father, Charles D'cunha, a renowned regional singer. Till date, he has been playing the piano in the church, and has participated in several choirs and gospel music competitions from the last 15 years. Further, he went on to study classical piano and theory of music from Trinity College of Music, London and completed his Grade 8 studies at the age of 15. His style incorporates a mix of gospel, pop and rock, and he cites Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Firehouse, Europe, Def Leppard, and Iron Maiden as his influences. Been influenced and inspired during his childhood learning days by the renowned guitarist Rupert Fernandes, and piano brothers Ben and Bosco Fernandez, Clinton was attracted by their gospel, jazz-style piano playing. He honed most of his piano skills by watching and learning Bosco as he played the piano in church. He owes his musicianship to them, and much of their influence can be seen and heard in his style of piano-playing. He took up his future jazz piano studies from Johnny Fernandez, and is currently pursuing an offline course on jazz improvisation and techniques from the ABRSM Jazz Syllabus. He joined the band Sininster Symphony with his engineering college friends and released an album, 'Avaricious Passion', which was ranked high in several music charts. He chose music as his career and began working towards it from 2012, until he met Sanah Moidutty, his college friend and now an upcoming playback singer with whom his work got him noticed and gave him the initial breakthrough in the music industry. Since 2014, Clinton has worked with several artists from the Bollywood music industry, and toured all of India and international venues in South Africa, Malaysia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Canada, and UK. By the end of 2015, he had worked with Bollywood music directors like Pritam, Sachin-Jigar, Sangeet Haldipur as well as several playback singers such as Ash King, Jonita Gandhi, Sonu Kakkar, Anusha Mani, Divya Kumar, Manasi Scott, Madhushree Bhattacharya, Ambili Menon, Siddhanth Bhosle, Shirley Setia, Sharaddha Sharma, Siddharth Basrur, and Thomson Andrews. Currently, he is also working as a music programmer and is working on the background scores of several Bollywood and regional movies. His debut movie, 'Shooter' (ft. Sunil Shetty, Randeep Hooda and Neetu Chandra) is scheduled to release in the year 2016.
Sayandip Roy is a professional keyboardist based out of Kolkata, West Bengal. Born in 1992, he is a composer and a pianist as well. He started his musical journey in 2005. Later, in 2010, he put together a band that included members of Frost, Prevail, High Octave, Infusion, Squa, HOK, and OCB (Tanmoy Saadhak, of MTV Rock On fame). With his band, he began touring and started to promote his instrumental tracks. Sayandip has been performing professionally for more than eight years now. He has played at a number of private and public events, college festivals, and music festivals. He has also toured with some very well-known musicians of India.
The best word to describe Rainburn is exceptional – imagine prog-tinged melodic hard rock with hints of Hindustani music. Rainburn likes to make opposite atmospheres collide. They complete one another, like in the case of Rembrandt‘s contrast between light and dark, bringing a plethora of emotions. Rainburn, based out of Bangalore, have Vats Iyengar on lead vocals and guitar, Allan Julius Fernandes on bass and vocals, Vineet Gogoi on guitar and vocals, and Praveen Kumar on drums.
Ralfin Stephen is a professional pianist/keyboardist based out of Kochi, Kerala. Born in Switzerland, Ralfin was just six year old when he got glued to his toy piano. Later, when he was 12, he started to learn the tabla. But, he realized that the tabla was not his cup of tea and took proper keyboard lessons when he was 14. Ralfin started his professional music career when he was 21 and, at the same time, joined with musicians like Jerry Amal Dev, Alphonse, Biji Pal, Kudamaloor Janrdhanan, etc. Deciding to be a full-time musician, he gave up his IT job and joined the Thrissur Chetana Academy under Fr Thomas Chakalamattathu. After passing 8th Grade from London Trinity College, he started to work on many projects like unplugged shows, LIVE piano concerts, television shows, and played for many bands as well. Stephen has been featured on almost every leading show like Kappa TV Music Mojo, Amritha TV Duet, Atmeeya Yathra, Shalom, etc. to name a few. At present, he is associated with bands, Acoustika and Amrutham Gamaya, and conducts his own shows with his band called Ralfin Stephen Band.
Mrityunjay Sharma is a professional instrumentalist based out of the capital city of India, New Delhi. Born in 1996, Mrityunjay is a famous composer, singer-songwriter, musician and philanthropist. He began his musical journey at the age of three. He is accredited by Guinness World Records as world’s #1 pianist in the longest piano recital for continuous 127 hours. His school, Junior Model School, had no music classes. Hence, he started playing the harmonium during the school assembly. Later, Mrityunjay assisted his father in cultural programmes, playing the harmonium. Mrityunjay did not have the keyboard, so his father used to arrange rented keyboards for him so that he could explore the instrument of different company brands. In 2006, he was admitted in Sangeet Bhushan, a scholarship-funded, four-year diploma course to provide the core knowledge of Indian classical instrumental music, from Rukmini Devi Lalit Kala Kendra, Pitampura, Delhi. When Mrityunjay was 12 years old, he made debut as a music director in the Ramleela act function in 2008 and continued to give background score every year till 2012. He was excellent in academics and was the topper in 12th standard. Sharma is completing graduation in 2016 from Shri Ram College of Commerce in New Delhi with a degree in commerce. He had wanted to play the harmonium for an uninterrupted stretch of time ever since he was in third grade when he heard about a college student playing the guitar for 66 hours. The dream resurfaced by a chance mention of the Limca Book of Records in 2014. Then he called Sudhanshu Bahuguna, begging him to guide his training sessions for the record attempt. Bahuguna realised the boy was ready and agreed to accept him. That was in March 2014. A year later, Sharma successfully tried for the Limca Records in March 2015 by playing the piano for continuous 52 hours and surpassed the previous national record of 50 hours. His teachers at SRCC chipped in by allowing him to skip classes to practice for Guinness World Records and Limca Book of Records attempts; a 1964 batch alumni, Billy Gupta, gifted him the synthesizer on which he would go on to make both his record attempts; and a classmate gave him a precious Rs 200 to cover the travelling expenses from his college to Bahuguna's Swarnimm Sangeet Mahavidyalaya. Mrityunjay Sharma is a BHEL - Foundation for Academic Excellence and Access scholar. The scholarship covers his expenses of studies, while also providing maintenance allowances and nurturing for his dreams. Being obliged for society, he composed and developed music therapy for autistic children and mass people in March 2016. He has performed across the nation for different organisations, clubs, and collaboration programmes at SRCC including Indo-Korea, Indo-UK, Indo-US, and CII National Conference. Among his favourite performance venues are India Habitat Centre, SRCC auditorium, Hotel Taj, etc. He is working on to bring the fastest pianist title record to India by surpassing the existing world record of most piano-key hits in one minute, which is currently held by Hungarian pianist, Bence Peter. Achievements: Academics Award for scoring top marks in 9th standard, SV, 2009 Yuva Talent Hunt Winner Award, RPVV, 2012 Academics Award for scoring top marks in 12th standard, RPVV, 2013 Special Prize Award for creating national record in Limca Book of Records, SRCC, 2015 Limca Book of Records holder, 2015 Principal Medal Award for Extraordinary achievement, SRCC, 2016 Certificate of Recognition for performance at world’s Longest Piano recital, SRCC, 2016 Guinness World Record holder, 2016
Sarbjeet Singh is a professional pianist based out of Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He has been playing piano at the age of six. Sarbjeet was inspired by his family itself. With his father's motivation and dedicated training of his teacher, Sarabjeet grew up in his small native town, Auraiya, and always wanted to be a passionate pianist. Initially, after performing his first interschool competition, Sarbjeet started formal training from Kanpur. During this training period, he won the state level championship in Indian classical form. He also completed Grade Eight from Trinity College of London in western classical music under the guidance of Adil Byramji. He evokes the nostalgia of great music director like Laxmikant Pyarelal, OP Nayar, RD Burman, Madan Mohan, Shankar Jai Kishan, etc. He has recorded several tracks with many esteemed musicians and artists. Sarbjeet received the opportunity to play in the anniversary event of the Oriental Bank of Commerce, Kanpur.
Harsha Iyer is a professional instrumentalist based out of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The 19-year-old guitarist, solo singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer draws influences from artists such as Spiritualized, Tom Waits, Birthday Party, Nick Cave Bad Seeds, Iggy Pop, Stooges, The Cramps, Gun Club, The Horror, Sonic Youth, The Smiths, Radiohead, The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Otis Redding, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, Doves, Beach Boys, The La's, Damon Albarn, Animal Collective, Sigur Ros, The Doves, Deer Hunter, and many more. He has released numerous tracks and the Indian independent circuit has very much loved all of them. His first album – Curious Toys – was released in 2011 and his second album – When It's Time (Part One) – in 2012.
Kiran Sunil is a professional multi-instrumentalist. Kiran was born in Abu Dhabi, UAE and started playing piano at the age of 6. Baffled by the current music scenario which is replacing instrumentalists and bands with DJ's and set his path to give people a new kind of music where they can sing along to his tunes. He draws his inspiration from artists like Yanni & Ludovico and has already played at many events across the country, including major cities like , Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bangalore, with an audience ranging from 50 to 10,000 people and above. He has been invited to many reputed hotels like The Torch 360 in Doha-Qatar to play at New Year's Eve. To Kiran, Music is a universal language which touches everyone's hearts.
