Duo to play noontime concert of world music

Multi-instrumental musical duo Ravi Padmanabha and David Mussen will perform at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford Oct. 24. 

Admission is free for this noon performance in the Studio Theater in Blaisdell Hall. For more information about the performance, visit www.upb.pitt.edu/TheArts or call the Bromeley Family Theater Box Office from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays at 814-362-5113. 

“I wanted to bring Ravi and Dave to campus so that our community can experience the world music talent these two musicians bring to their performances,” said Courtney Mealy, Director of Arts Programming. 

The musical duo performs a wide variety of styles and genres of music featuring percussion and wind instruments. 

Padmanabha is a musical veteran who made a name for himself as a composer and multi-instrumentalist after spending much of his life studying a wide range of free-flowing musical styles from Indian to experimental to jazz. 

Mussen is equally experienced and multi-faceted. He’s been able to hold down membership in multiple bands at once for decades. The variety of genres includes bluegrass and Afro-Latin.

n his early years as a musician, Padmanabha had an acute interest in percussion, especially the drum set. He was also surrounded by Indian classical music, and, wanting to pursue that part of his life, Padmanabha studied under experts like Pandits Samar Saha of Calcutta and Sharda Sahai. (Pandit being a title of prestige in Indian classical music). 

When living in Buffalo, NY., Padmanabha expanded his repertoire into jazz, world, and experimental music. Over the years, he performed in a local capacity, eventually starting his own band with his brothers, Family FUNKtion and the Sitar Jams, which performed at Pitt-Bradford in 2016. 

Mussen also found his way into music at an early age, and he began performing most notably as the clarinetist in Skiffle Minstrels, a Western swing band, and as a multi-instrumentalist in the 12/8 Path Band, an Afro-Latin music group, both local Buffalo bands. His songwriting journey includes his contribution to the Robot Holiday network of musicians, writing new and unusual holiday-themed originals.