Participants of Different Strokes work on musical ideas at the Calcutta School of Music. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Wednesday evening was like any other at the Calcutta School of Music (CSM) at Sunny Park: a quiet flute class in session at the main auditorium; guitar and piano lessons upstairs. But at the end of the corridor, cut off from the rest of the music school, a group of musicians were at play on instruments ranging from the acoustic guitar to the exotic oud (the fretless pear-shaped Arabic lute), to the sarod, exchanging an array of interesting ideas in the process. Members of the roots-folk group Calcutta Cycle and guitarist Tajdar Junaid were clearly communicating, despite dissimilarities in their respective musical languages.

This process of bonding is the first level in the music education project named Different Strokes — Musical Voices from Communities, organised by the British Council, in association with CSM, which kicked off on December 8.

The “creative music-leadership project” brings together young people and music professionals in an effort that will culminate in a concert at City Centre on December 19. Different Strokes primarily involves young people who have a strong interest in developing music leadership skills and would like to take these qualities further. The key project areas will be Calcutta and Mumbai.

The initiative also involves Edinburgh-based flautist and composer Lucy Forde and pianist, sitar player and composer Michael Goodey — both tutors at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama — for the 2008 chapter of Different Strokes, for which the groundwork started this August.

“I first visited Calcutta this August and conducted workshops with different groups, explaining what the project was going to be like. The aim of that trip was also to identify partners for the project; institutions and individual musicians,” explained Lucy.

The core group of musicians selected includes violinist Ranjan Ghosh, western classical pianist Chaitali Ganguly, composer/guitarists Joel Mukherjee and Tajdar Junaid and percussionist Sanjay Gupta. Participants of the wider group include members of the city band Kryptic, known for its classic rock inclinations, pianist Sharmistha Shom, jazz pianist/keyboardist Pradyumna Singh Manot and singer Sukanya Ghosh.

Michael grew up in London with Bollywood music and picked up the sitar as a natural choice along with his Western Classical education. He is also an electronic music enthusiast. Both he and Lucy emphasise that a good leader should be able to get the best out of any group. “It can be a combination of providing direction when necessary and sitting back and letting it happen when it’s not required,” said Lucy.

At this first level, it is the bonding process that’s important; to see how people from different musical backgrounds function as a whole, said Michael. “The main crux of this whole project is to really experiment as much as possible, to be able to feed off each other — something that musicians may not have the opportunity to indulge in, even within their own bands,” added Lucy.