Amie Maciszewski

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Dr. Amie Maciszewski is an internationally acclaimed sitarist, teaching artist, and ethnomusicologist who has spent her adult life studying, performing, teaching, and promoting South Asia’s music/culture. She completed nearly a decade of immersive training in India (1977-85), under the late Pandit Suresh Misra) at Santiniketan, West-Bengal, also earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Hindustani music/sitar there. She has taken periodic immersion training from Grammy-nominated Ustad Aashish Khan since 1991 and the late Hindustani vocal legend Padma Vibhushan Girija Devi (1996-2017). She earned a PhD in Ethnomusicology at University of Texas/Austin during which time she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. She was also a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow (ethnomusicology) at University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada).

Amie has performed in concerts and taught in residencies, workshops, and on several university faculties throughout North America, India, Pakistan, Europe, and Japan. She co-directed and directed the University of Alberta Indian Music Ensemble. She has been a juried artist on the Texas Arts Commission Touring Roster and Mid-America Arts Alliance, leading her Sangeet Millennium Ensemble in school and university concerts and workshops in underserved areas in the region since 2008. She is an Empaneled Artist of India World Cultural Forum and multiple grant awardee from the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture and City of Austin Cultural Arts Division. She served as Visiting Musician-Researcher at ITC-Sangeet Research Academy/Kolkata (2011-2014) and as New Mexico Arts Division Artist-in-Residence (1986-90). She toured in 2013-2014 with the late Oscar-winning screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere as soundtrack composer/performer for Enacte Arts’ production of Carriere’s Mahabharata.

She was awarded the Gandharva Puraskar in 2014 by Hindustan Art & Music Society (Burdwan, India) for her contributions to Indian music abroad. In 2016 the US Consulate/Lahore, Pakistan, invited her for a cultural diplomacy performance outreach tour, which concluded with a felicitation from the Lahore/Mozang Rotary Club for “using her music as a tool for peace across borders.” In 2018, with a team supported by a grant from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, she conducted faculty training workshops for Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkwa and completed a residency as sitar performer/teaching artist at National Academy for Performing Arts (NAPA) in Karachi. Her 2019 South Asia tour included performances, workshops, and presentations at Fatima Jinnah Women University (Rawalpindi, Pakistan), Aashish Khan School of World Music (Kolkata, India), and Sanatkada Institute (Lucknow, India). Navigating limitations due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 while homebound in Dallas, she completed an online World Music Open Stage Series, collaborating with musicians from India, Pakistan, and the US. She also co-directed, produced, and performed in a multimedia, multidisciplinary live outdoor performance installation, Clear Light of the Void, interpreting folk traditions from South Asian bhakti, Sufi, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. In addition, she performed in numerous online concerts and festivals hosted by classical music organizations in India and the US. She continues this work in 2021.

Passionate about women’s/human rights, she has done extensive field research in India, Pakistan, and North America; published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters; and produced-directed three noted ethnographic films on socially marginalized musicians in India, two of them award-winning. She completed several awareness and fundraising tours in the US and UK in between 2003 and 2010 to benefit the Indian NGO Guria Sansthan, dedicated to empower women and children to resist trafficking and other forms of sexual slavery.

She founded in 2006 and continues to direct the Sangeet Millennium Ensemble, an acclaimed collective of local, national, and international musicians who blend South Asian classical, folk, and devotional music with jazz and other world musics. The ensemble has three CDs to their credit. Currently based in Dallas, TX, she also offers lessons in sitar, Hindustani voice, and Raag Sangeet through her Sangeet Millennium Music Academy.