Sharik has an impressive background in music having studied piano at Longy School of Music in Boston under the tutelage of renowned Russian concert pianist Ludmilla Lifson and later at the Bangalore School of Music. He started his tryst with the piano at the age of five and by sixteen, had completed the curricula of the Royal School of Music, London and Trinity School of Music, Cambridge. He then went to the United States to attend the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He was taught by musicians such as Dave Holland, Eddie Gomez, Billy Hart, Gary Bartz and Joe Lovano and is currently part of several groups and projects on the Paris jazz scene including his own quartet for which he has been composing extensively. Hasan’s music is inspired by the world around him and by events that happen in his own life, positive or negative.

In Paris, for instance, the constant repetition of the nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ picked out by practising children in the flat next door led him to compose an entertaining piece of music that cleverly incorporated the childish tune.

“I was mugged one night while returning home from a concert in Paris and relieved of my I-pod. Luckily I was able to retrieve it with the help of the police but the whole experience led me to compose a dark musical piece based on the episode,” he says.

He played his own interpretations of various well-known compositions that sounded delightfully different and yet recognisable from the original numbers. Thunderous applause from his audience brought Hasan back to his piano for one last piece and soon he was mobbed by his fans which ranged from ages twelve to seventy.

Jackie Pinto