Teaching

Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music – President (July 2009 – Feb 2014)

In 2009, Prasanna and Mr. G.R.K. Reddy, Chairman and Managing Director of Marg Group of Companies came together with a shared dream to establish India’s first professional international college for contemporary music in a traditional Indian Gurukula model at Marg Swarnabhoomi, 80 km from Chennai. Prasanna was the President from inception until Feb 2014, when he left SAM to pursue other projects. In addition to being President, Prasanna also designed the curriculum and served as Guitar Faculty during his time at SAM. SAM continues to be one of Asia’s top music institutions for learning contemporary music that includes Jazz, Rock, Carnatic, World music, Music Production and much more.

Under Prasanna’s Presidentship, Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) presented numerous workshops and camps featuring Prasanna and some of the world’s top musicians including keyboardist Jordan Rudess, bassists Victor Wooten, Mike Pope, guitarists David Gilmore, Jeff Richman, drummers Rodney Holmes, Dafnis Prieto , singers Magos Herrera, Fjoralba Turku and numerous others. Prasanna also conducted numerous solo master classes, clinics and seminars at SAM during his time there.

For more info, http://www.sam.org.in

Banff Center for the Arts Residency, Banff, Canada – Guitar Faculty

Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music – May 12-31, 2008
Program Director Dave Douglas
Duration of Prasanna residency May 18- 25, 2008
Fellow Faculty for the week Dave Douglas – Trumpet, Rudresh Mahanthappa – Saxophone, Prasanna – Guitar, Hugh Marsh – Violin, Andy Milne – Piano, Thomas Morgan – Bass, Dan Weiss – Drums
Other faculty for the program The Bad Plus, Migeul Zenon, Yosvany Terry, Donny McCaslin – Saxophone, Wayne Krantz – Guitar, Ambrose Akinmusire, Ingrid Jenson, Laurie Fink – Trumpet, Eric Revis – Bass, Clarence Penn – drums
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Workshops/Clinics

Prasanna conducts several workshops/master classes all over the world to share the joy of cross-cultural artistic explorations in music with fellow musicians, artists and enthusiastic audiences as part of his outreach programs. Some of his acclaimed recent ones include –

Sept 15, 2015 NSS Hill Spring International School, Mumbai

Music workshop for children

Sept 15, 2015 St.Xavier’s high school, Fort, Mumbai

Music workshop for children

Sept14, 2015 Victoria Memorial School for the Blind, Mumbai

Music workshop for children

Feb 20, 2015 – Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Talk on artist branding and positioning, Rutgers MBA Program. Students of professor Anika Sharma’s branding and advertising class chose to do their final project with Prasanna as their subject exploring the artist’s global positioning as an important ambassador of culture

Feb 7, 2015 – Alternate Guitar Festival, Spectrum, New York, NY

Prasanna’s masterclass along with Dave Fiuczynski and Gyan Riley focused on alternate guitarapproaches and integration of Indian, Middle Eastern and other non-western musical concepts

April 13,2013 – New School, New York

Prasanna did a class on Carnatic singing for the Voice students at the New School Jazz program. Here he is seen with the students, Voice Chair Richard Harper, Voice Faculty Elisabeth Lohninger and Kate Baker

April 10, 2013 – McNally Smith College of Music, St.Paul, MN

Prasanna was invited by President Harry Chalmiers to present a series of guest lectures and workshops for the Film Scoring, Guitar, Vocal and Composition departments. Prasanna’s unique musical landscape helped give students a window into various possibilities. Here he is seen with faculty Peggy Larson and her vocal students after one of the sessions

April 3, 2013 – Steinhardt School, New York University, New York, NY

Prasanna’s multi-faceted musical personality as artist and teacher was explored in this presentation to advanced Jazz students at NYU which also featured an interactive question and answer session on bringing new musical concepts and ideas from Carnatic music in Jazz performance

March 5, 2013 New School Jazz Program

New School Faculty Rory Stuart invited Prasanna to give a guest lecture and performance workshop for his Advanced Rhythmic studies class. Students were introduced to Prasanna’s performance and compositional approaches with special emphasis on rhythmic structures

April 7, 2011 – Osnabruck, Germany

Prasanna did a class on Carnatic guitar for all guitar students of the University of Music in Osnabruck, Germany – Students worked with Prasanna in small groups and learned some Carnatic guitar technique

Sept 22, 2008 – Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

Clinic on Carnatic music at Department of Ethnomusicology. Accompanied by Poongulam Subramanian on mridangam, S. Karthick on ghatam and Bangalore Amrit on kanjira

Sept 12, 2008 – Madison East High School, Madison, WI
Performance workshop on Carnatic music. Accompanied by Poongulam Subramanian on mridangam, S. Karthick on ghatam and Bangalore Amrit on kanjira

April 25, 2007 – Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Lecture on ‘Innovation in music: Bridging East and West’. Presented by MIT Innovation Club and MIT Sloan South Asia Business Club

In addition to these, Prasanna has also performed/jammed in other workshops with artists such as Herbie Hancock and his works were performed at workshops by the Esterhazy String Quartet, Mobius chamber ensemble from the UK and others.