ABOUT The SINGING HEART
Rajeswar Bhattacharya and Suekali Stubbs
The Singing Heart was founded by Suekali in 2001 after several years of offering Indian Raga Singing workshops together with Rajeswar Bhattacharya. These workshops enabled western students of all abilities to access the rich tradition of Indian classical music and songs of Rabindranath Tagore. There are many students who continue year after year to deepen what has become for them a profound practice of the heart. Since then, the Singing Heart has developed to offer different types of workshops that include body and breath work, singing from different global traditions, harmony singing, chanting and most recently, 'wild singing' - connecting our voices with the the natural environment in its dimensions of earth, water, fire, air and space.
We also offer a range of seminars based at our stunning Argyll venue on various spiritual and creative themes.
Suekali is passionate about everyone being able to sing. She facilitates inspiring and nourishing workshops for all levels of ability and experience, leaving people with their hearts open and their bodies resonating. She has originally studied western classical music specialising in oboe and piano. Following her music degree, she taught in special schools with a wide range of children then adults with all types of ability. This involved teaching steel band, saxophone and singing all types of song with all ages, and often accompanying with guitar or piano accordion. In 1988, she went to India to volunteer and met her teacher and partner, Rajeswar Bhattacharya, starting a life-long study of Indian raga and songs of Tagore. She has continued to develop her interest in voice work through in depth study of the First Nature body, breath and voice work approach plus creative arts therapy. She currently runs workshops at her home in Scotland, London, France, India and teachers annually at the Unicorn Voice Camp. She is a member of the Natural Voice Practitioners Network, believing passionately in everyone's right and ability to sing.
Rajeswar Bhattacharya passed away in November 2023. He was a renowned teacher and performer of the songs of Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindrasangeet). He was an exceptional, passionate and skilful teacher of western students, enabling all levels from total beginners to professional singers to access this rich tradition. He was born in Kolkata, West Bengal in India and has a flourishing music school which he founded in 1972 with internationally renowned students. He studied at Gitabitan music school, and classical music with Ramesh Banerjee and then Malabika Kannan. He continued studies of Tagore music with Kana Biswas. He has been coming to the UK and Europe every year since 1996 and offered an annual programme of inspiring workshops together with Suekali. Together they offered workshops in Scotland, London, France, and each year they took a group to study raga intensively in India. He has numerous CDs of his Tagore songs, and also released a CD of Bengali songs for children based on 10 different ragas, composing his own tunes.