There are concerts you attend and concerts you experience. Rishab Rikhiram Sharma’s Sitar for Mental Health Tour opening night in Bengaluru was firmly the latter. The kind of evening that ends and leaves you standing in the car park, not quite ready to return to the ordinary world.

The crowd that gathered told its own story before a single note was played. Students in their early twenties stood beside couples in their fifties. Families arrived together. Tech professionals, artists, classical music devotees, and people who had simply heard something extraordinary was happening and followed that instinct. Not the demographic you expect at an Indian classical concert, and yet every single one of them knew exactly where they were and exactly who they had come to see.

That is the Rishab Rikhiram Sharma effect. And it is something genuinely rare.

The Artist

Rishab picked up the sitar at ten. He has performed at the White House Diwali celebrations, played to 60,000-person stadiums as a solo sitarist, and taken the instrument to Burning Man. He has spent the last two years selling out venues across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom. The 2025 India leg of this tour was postponed in solidarity with the country during a period of geopolitical tension, which meant that by the time he finally arrived in Bengaluru, the anticipation had been building for over a year. The room felt every bit of that.

The Evening

From the first note, it was clear this was not going to be the kind of classical concert where the audience sits in polite, reverent silence and applauds at the correct moments. The energy was live from the start. Warm, participatory, completely in the hands of a performer who understands how to read a room and give it exactly what it needs.

The set moved through moods the way a great album does, from introspection to joy, from stillness to something close to euphoria. There were moments of technical brilliance that drew gasps from the seasoned classical listeners and moments of emotional directness that landed equally hard on everyone who had never heard a raga in their life. That is the particular genius of what Rishab does: he does not ask you to meet the music halfway. The music comes to you. And then it stays.

The younger members of the audience were watching with the specific intensity of people who have found something they did not know they were looking for. There is a generation in India right now that has grown up between streaming playlists and Carnatic practice at home, and Rishab Rikhiram Sharma has become, for many of them, the artist who makes both worlds feel not just compatible but inevitable. The phones that came out during the concert were not a sign of distraction. They were a sign of wanting to hold onto something.

SITARA

A word about the instrument, because it deserves one. Built by Rishab’s father, master luthier Sanjay Sharma of the legendary Rikhi Ram’s Music, a house crafting instruments since 1920, SITARA is India’s first fully electric sitar powered by 640 LEDs. Played standing, it is a visual and sonic experience unlike anything else on a stage. When it appeared during the concert, the room shifted. The LEDs responded to the music, deepening and shifting with the raga, turning the instrument into something you watch as much as you hear. It is innovation in full conversation with tradition, which is perhaps the most precise description of Rishab himself.

The Organisation

A well-run concert is an invisible thing, and that invisibility is the highest compliment you can pay a production team. The SFMH team, Neo Fox Media, and everyone behind the Bengaluru night created an evening where nothing got in the way of the music. The sound was exceptional, the pacing unhurried, the experience from entry to encore seamless. These things matter more than they are given credit for, and Bengaluru got all of it right.

The Feeling It Left Behind

The best concerts end too soon. Not because they are short, but because you are not ready for them to stop. Rishab Rikhiram Sharma’s opening night in Bengaluru ended and left an entire room wanting more, which is exactly as it should be. Wanting more of the music, wanting more of the atmosphere, wanting to come back and bring everyone you know.

Bengaluru received this tour with love and warmth, as Rishab noted himself. The city meant it. And the rest of India is next.

Upcoming Tour Dates

20th March, Mumbai. 22nd March, Pune. 27th March, Hyderabad. 29th March, Jaipur. 3rd April, Chennai. 5th April, Ahmedabad. 10th April, Chandigarh. 12th April, Kolkata. 19th April, New Delhi.

Tickets available on District by Zomato.

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