Message from Lyon Leifer

Ravi Shankar Mishra is a first-rate bansuri artist in Maihar Gharana, trained by Pt. Nityanand Haldipur, and maker of highest quality bansuris. They feature excellent intonation, response, and range through a solid two and a half octaves. They are designed to most effectively enable use of the critical seventh finger hole. That enables full sounding tivra madhyam at the instrument’s low end. It also produces much smoother bridging of the register break in both up and down directions. This is a critical element in producing beautiful aalaap in numerous important ragas.

The seventh hole and the grip which enables using it were developed by the great Pannalal Ghosh and propagated by Devendra Murdeshwar to the current generation. This greatly enhances players’ ability to subtly control shruti, meend, andolan and the many other microtonal elements that characterize the bansuri’s music at its finest. Ravi’s possibly singular contribution to 7-hole bansuri design has been to enable it to be reached and managed with minimal stretch. His placement of the 5th (Dhaivat) hole, also following the Ghosh pattern, creates a distinct advantage over various other designs. So combining innovation with tradition helps make the subtle, vocalistic graces our gharana prides itself on feasible for students, amateurs, and professionals. At the same time, using Ravi’s instruments as a six-hole instrument with either grip remains entirely feasible. This can be extremely useful for managing particular combinations at speed in a ragas such as Gujri Todi or Basant, as well as for assaying a shift from one grip to the other.

I proudly recommend Ravi’s instruments to all my students and to anyone else who may ask. They are now being played widely in America in classical, jazz and popular music contexts and making fans of the sounds they produce in all of them.