GLOBAL MUSIC INSTITUTE
Changing the face of music education in India Reinforcing their vision with a new 2 acre
campus dedicated for music education
Aditya and Tarun Balani are veterans of the independent music circuit in India. With multiple albums, international collaborations, festivals and tours under their belt, the brothers have also been front runners in bringing a higher level of contemporary music education to India.
The Journey Begins
What began in 2011 as a performance program run from a small campus in Lajpat Nagar, has now grown into a 3 year diploma program taught at a 2 acre campus in Greater Noida.“ The value of good music education became almost obvious to me, ironically by the lack of it. I really wanted to learn to play and compose but couldn’ t find a good teacher to guide me and had to rely on self learning. When Tarun and I got an opportunity to study music formally in the US, we absorbed as much as we could to make the best of it! Both of us started teaching quite early on in our careers and this continued when we would come home during semester breaks. Over time our student body kept growing organically. After we graduated we setup a small space to teach more formally. Our first program was a month long intensive performance program with international faculty. Though it was a very new concept which challenged the music education model at the time, a lot of the young musicians found value in the program. The success of the program help spread word and interest about
GMI in the music community and soon we moved to a semester based system”, says GMI’ s Executive Director, Aditya Balani on how it all began.
Tarun Balani, GMI’ s Artistic Director, talking about the ideation since he first studied music at Drummer’ s Collective in NY explains,“ The initial vision of GMI came from a very simple concept of creating a space for young artistes and musicians to have access to high quality music education. My experience at Drummer’ s Collective in NY was almost a wake up call for what was lacking in our country when it came to music education and the power of enabling the arts.“
GMI very soon became a hub for local musicians to learn, interact and perform. While there was a lot interest in learning guitar, drums, voice and piano with GMI’ s international faculty students were able to study instruments like the double bass, trumpet and saxophone which are normally quite inaccessible. This led to a growing community welcoming all genres of music, not only the more popular ones but also more obscure and experimental.“ Developing and supporting an artist community has been a strong focus for us since the very beginning, and we were really happy to see us becoming a platform for artistic expression”, says Aditya.
The Score Magazine
24 highonscore. com