About

 Aabha Soumitra is a Music composer-Singer-Songwriter from Pune , India . Starting her musical journey as a student of Hindustani Classical Music (Gharana Gwalior-Jaipur) under Guru Jaydeep Vaidya since 9 years, Aabha’s compositional tendencies lean towards folk music with an Indian classical atmosphere. She prefers the medium of her voice while in the process of her musical composition.

Initial career

While studying at Sir Parshurambhau college Pune, Aabha was part of the cultural activities in the music section of the art circle in grade 11th - but soon turned to gaining experience in working as a recording engineer , Administrative support , musical arranger and composer in a gradual journey at D’verb Experience - a musical production hub run by Devendra Bhome. While working there she contributed to many commercial as well as contemporary projects such as web-series, daytime drama series , contemporary musical direction for dancical and literary works , and commercial brand jingles. Most of the works where Aabha assisted at D’verb were purely commercial - which helped her practice her technical and compositional skills until graduation in B.A.Philosophy from Savitribai Phule University of Pune.

Studying in Chennai

After graduation Aabha was in Chennai for a year and a half learning music composition under Karthik Manickavasakam at KM Music Conservatory president by Sir A.R.Rahman. Currently the last phase of her submissions goes on from Pune through virtual communication after the outbreak of COVID-19. 

While living in Chennai - Aabha started working also as a musical educator- In schools ‘APL GLOBAL INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL’ and ‘THE PUPIL SAVITHA ECO SCHOOL’ as a composer for school dramas and Hindusthani classical vocals’ teacher respectively. (She also conducted a session for Deepastambha Charitable Trust for musical exposure of children from rural parts in Pune).

Being in Chennai benefited also in meeting a remarkable composer from Switzerland, Fortunat Frolich - a critically acclaimed contemporary classical composer with whom Aabha participates for the ongoing project ‘Composition in Dialogue’ supported by Pro Helvetia New Delhi. 

‘Raabi Re’ and ‘FLOW’

Working with Fortunat is not the only international collaboration that Aabha has done but also with Mehdi Tebyanian a Tambour playing artist from Iran, who collaborated for her project ‘Raabi Re’ . This project happened to be quite an important and remarkable project in Aabha’s musical career until now- as the project was driven from pure artistic purpose where Aabha , and her partners in the project, Neel (Filmmaker) and Aarya (Traveler explorer) went to Himachal Pradesh following the river Raavi and created a musical visual experience ; the song ‘Raabi re’. The song was composed on instinct at the river banks , and the same with the visuals. Production of this project led Aabha, Neel and Aarya to form ‘FLOW’ a platform of collaborative and experimental art where there collaboration tends to be of various mediums. Although ‘FLOW’ existed after ‘Raabi Re’ the duo of Aabha and Neel started their experimental works before that, with their project ‘A video a Day’ which was again of an instinctive nature. Today, FLOW is a bearer of many art and contemporary projects such as ‘Journey Of an Expression’ , ‘Realisations’ , ‘Sthree’ , ‘Paniya Bharan’ , ‘Neelam Neelam’ , and many more. FLOW also conducts workshops for art-nature awareness titled as ‘CO-LAB-ORATE’.