Amie Maciszewski - Sitar player

Amie Maciszewski is a sitarist, scholar, and Hindustani music educator who seeks to create and inhabit spaces where the performing and visual arts, knowledge, and human rights weave together as narrative threads of the same story. She initially trained at Santiniketan, India, in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, under the late Prof. Suresh Misra, where she earned B.Mus.and M.Mus. degrees. Disciple of Grammy Award nominee sarode maestro Aashish Khan and Hindustani vocal diva Padmabhushan Girija Devi since the early 1990s, Amie has performed throughout North America, in India, Europe, and Japan, and has taught in North America since 1986. She has received numerous awards and grants for her scholarship and education/outreach through performance, ensemble directing, and documentary filmmaking. She earned the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at University of Texas at Austin and has taught both applied music and academic courses on the faculties of the Universities of Texas, Alberta (where she served as Director of the Indian Music Ensemble in 2006, as well as of the community fusion ensemble Naad-Avaz in 2001-02), and Pittsburgh. In 2005, she performed to enthusiastic audiences at several venues in Kolkata, India, among them the prestigious Sangeet Research Academy. Several of her articles documenting her research with women musicians and socially marginalized musicians in India have been published in journals and books.