Zakir Hussain selected for Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships in field of performing arts

The Sangeet Natak Akademi has named four eminent personalities in the field of performing arts – tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, dancer Sonal Mansingh, dancer and choreographer Jatin Goswami and Bharatnatyam exponent K. Kalyanasundaram Pillai – for the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellow or Akademi Ratna awards. The Fellowship of the Akademi is the most prestigious and a rare honour, which is restricted to 40 numbers at any given time. The General Council meeting of the Sangeet Natak Akademi also selected 44 artistes from the field of music, dance, theatre, traditional / folk / tribal music/ dance/ theatre, puppetry and overall contribution / scholarship in the performing arts for the Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards (Akademi Puraskar) for the year 2018. The artistes include, Mani Prasad in Hindustani Vocal, Tarun Bhattacharya for Hindustani Instrumental – Santoor, Radha Sridhar for Bharatanatyam, Akham Lakshmi Devi for Manipuri, Rajiv Naik for Playwriting and Malini Awasthi in Folk Music. The 44 artistes include three joint awards.