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about the sangati center
The Sangati Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit chamber music venue and community center focused on Indian classical music in San Francisco.
Founded in 2006 by Gautam Tejas Ganeshan, the Sangati Center has since hosted over 150 public, sliding-scale admission (no-one turned away for lack of funds) concerts of Indian classical music, making it one of the most active and unique venues of its kind in San Francisco - a public art-house focused on a traditional art form. On average, concerts attract between 15 - 40 guests, meaning that the Sangati Center has served more than 4000 listeners in its two-year history, some of whom have been introduced for the first time to one of the world's most subtle, rigorous, and beautiful art forms.Not only have some of the greatest artists in the robust worldwide community of Indian classical music been brought to San Francisco to perform in its beautiful, small performance space [click here for a complete list of artists], where no listener is more than a few feet from the musicians, and where all concerts are presented acoustically (no sound-systems or electric instruments), but many from the Bay Area's own startlingly vibrant, but previously relatively invisible community of concert-level musicians can now be found performing at the Sangati Center regularly.
Originally located in Oakland, the Sangati Center grew and moved to its current location early in 2007, where it has since become known for its innovative approach to serving a traditional art form through presenting frequent public performances - on average 6 per month - and to growing the community of listeners through active outreach involving but not limited to a presence on public radio stations (KPFA, KUSF, KALW, KALX), interviews and on-the-air performances on public access television, reviews and other coverage in the newspapers and weeklies (e.g. SF Chronicle Datebook Front Page Review - Feb. 26, 2008), and through collaborations with other arts organizations, such as a pending co-presentation of a concert at the Asian Art Museum's Samsung Hall as part of the 2009 San Francisco International Arts Festival.
Sangati Center concerts are chamber music concerts - the hall is intimate and acoustically alive, and listeners and artists alike sit on the floor on rugs with cushions, with a few benches in the back for the elderly and for those who prefer them. The venue's street-level weekly programming enables it to be a subtle but consistent agent for simple beauty and community connection in its residential neighborhood of San Francisco's Mission District.
The Sangati Center also serves as a gallery for site-specific public art installations in other media, drawing upon themes related to the Sangati Center's core purpose. For two months in late 2007 the Sangati Center hosted an exhibit entitled
["Twilight - An Installation Based on the Raga Marwa"], featuring the work in traditional and contemporary calligraphy of Minette Lee Mangahas, with colors, textures, shapes, and themes drawn from a raga in Indian classical music. (n.b. - ragas are the principal aesthetic-cum-music-theoretical entities in ICM).There are precious few public venues in San Francisco focused exclusively on hosting chamber music concerts. One is the Red Poppy Art House, located catty-corner on the same block as the Sangati Center - one need not cross any streets to get from one to the other. And to our best knowledge, the Sangati Center is the first full-time concert venue of its kind, on its scale, serving Indian classical music by hosting year-round weekly concerts by local and visiting artists, anywhere outside of India. This might not be possible anywhere else in the world. To the extensive (and heretofore somewhat underground) community of local ICM aficionados, the Sangati Center has generated all the excitement of the first jazz club in Europe. And by many accounts, the Sangati Center's ability as a venue to maintain a consistent concert schedule for over two years has illuminated a new possibility for San Francisco's other world musics.
sc in the press
To read, view, and listen to press coverage of the Sangati Center, click here.list of artists
For a list of artists who have performed at the Sangati Center, click here.faq
Admission fees for all events are accepted at the door only. Sangati Center events are not ticketed and seats are not assigned - the admission fee is a cover charge, and patrons can move about freely in the hall once admitted. Children under 12 are free and always welcome, and seniors over 65 pay half-price.Nearly all seating is floor seating, on carpets. We provide yoga-style blankets, blocks, and a few cushions to help you be comfortable. You may bring your own setup as well, but please do not bring chairs. We have two wooden benches in the back which are available to early birds, but are also reserved for seniors and the disabled when required.
Please arrive early to ensure admittance, a good spot, and that our events start on time. For concerts where we expect an unusually large turnout, only members will be admitted until 15 minutes before showtime.
Most events are priced on a sliding scale - this means that each attendee is encouraged to pay any admission fee within the range that he or she feels is affordable. Patrons with the means and inclination to provide the higher end of the range are encouraged to support the event to the extent they are able. No one will ever be turned away for lack of funds. The admission fee reflects what we feel our average attendee is obliged to donate to support our programming.
what does sangati mean?
The word sangati in Sanskrit means "coming together". It comes from a combination of "gati", or "movement", and "sam", or "together".Sangati also has some special musical meanings. In South Indian classical music, a sangati is a melodic development or progression, and the related word sangat is used in North Indian classical music for the art of accompaniment.