Sam Evans

Sam Evans is a contemporary Australian musician and tabla player who works as performer, composer and educator in Melbourne. Following many years of training and research in India, he has dedicated his career to integrating the culture, music and instruments of India in Australia. He is a regular international performer of both traditional Indian music and contemporary world music. He composes music for film and documentaries, is the founding director of the Melbourne Tabla School and is the only Australian to hold a Doctorate in tabla.

As a musician, Sam Evans’ distinctive musical approach expresses both a sense of spaciousness and the vibrant sophistication of the Indian tabla tradition he learnt from Pandit Anindo Chatterjee in India and Ustad Zakir Hussain in America. As a performer and composer, he has many albums and projects to his name from a wide variety of genres, including Indian and Western classical music, world music, jazz, pop, rock, film, documentaries, TV shows and live television. His expertise in the field of world music have many times been acknowledged by the state and federal funding bodies, The Australia Arts Council, Arts Victoria and Ian Potter Foundation. Music from his main trio project, Fine Blue Thread, has recently been selected by the BBC in London to be presented on a compilation CD alongside Ravi Shankar, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Nitin Sawhney as a representation of contemporary approaches to Indian influenced music.