Rudresh Mahanthappa

Alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa arrived in New York City in 1997 from Boulder, Colorado, and immediately began to integrate himself into the jazz scene as a sideman. His distinctive sound is matched only by his ambitious manner of melding the modernist jazz tradition with South Indian music and electronic sounds -- all depending on which ensemble he heads. After his birth in Trieste, Italy, his family moved to Boulder and he spent his early years growing up in Colorado, taking up the saxophone as a teen. He later studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and DePaul Un...