Musicians on stage are no different to footballers improvising on the ground. Rakesh Chaurasia is more than familiar with it. The nephew of the legendary flautist Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia is a multiple Grammy award-winner, and chuckles when we ask how musicians make those shifts. “Ours is a constant effort to get on the same page with our fellow musicians on stage,” he shares. This challenge is only multiplied when the said musicians are improvisers like Ustad Zakir Hussain and Taufiq Qureshi.

Tomorrow, Chaurasia will join the duo, along with vocalist Vijay Prakash and keyboardist-composer Sangeet Haldipur in a rare concert that will test all their improvisational skills. “The idea of the collaboration started with a conversation last year. We decided to have the first concert in Chinchwad back in February. Zakirbhai himself is an amazing curator, and knows how to present an ensemble, and bring it together. He has an innate understanding of how a unit should sound,” Chaurasia shares.