Born in Kolkata in 1969 to a family steeped in the arts, Pandit Suman Laha found his earliest inspiration in his great-grand-uncle, the late Shri Nadu Mullick, touring partner of Pt. Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, who sparked a lifelong devotion to Hindustani music.
Trained in the pure Senia Dhrupad tradition under the eminent veena master Pt. Shyamal Chattopadhyay, Suman honed a style renowned for its crystal-clear intonation, strict grammatical discipline, and emotive depth. He performs on a custom-designed, 20-string slide veena of his own invention, an evolution of the ancient Vichitra Veena, allowing him to weave lyrical meends (glides) and intricate gamaks with equal ease. Also he learnt from Pandit Manilal Nag, Pandit Barun kumar Pal, Pandit Dilip Patra, Pandit Debasish Bhattacharya (sarod), head of the department of music, Rabindra Bharati University.
Over three decades of concertizing, he has appeared at India’s premier conferences, the Lute Festival in Dresden, Germany’s Deutsche-Indische Gesellschaft series, Berlin’s Tagore Centre, and numerous U.S. universities and cultural venues. In these settings he has collaborated with tabla legends such as Pt. Anindo Chatterjee, Pt. Kumar Bose, and Pt. Abhijit Banerjee, earning praise for bringing uncommon ragas and talas to life without sacrificing classical rigor.
Suman has been based in the United States since 2001, serving as Music Director of Cerritos Music Circle in Southern California while mentoring students across California, Arizona, Nevada, and beyond through the traditional guru-shishya paramparā. His teaching emphasizes deep listening, slow, mindful practice, and creative freedom inside classical boundaries, an approach that makes him an ideal guide for students.
With Pandit Suman Laha at the helm, students can expect an authentic yet welcoming doorway into North Indian classical music, gaining not only technical skills but also an abiding appreciation for the spiritual practice (sādhana) that underlies every raga.