The Space Between the Notes: Niladri Kumaar Honours Zakir Hussain in Newark
By Megan Routledge | The Sound Cafe Journal
Some musical partnerships become more than collaborations. They become conversations, built on instinct, trust and the understanding that sometimes the most important part of a performance is what happens between the notes.
For sitarist and composer Niladri Kumaar, his long-running musical relationship with the late tabla maestro Zakir Hussain was one such conversation.
On Friday, November 6, Kumaar brings The Space Between the Notes: Honouring Zakir Hussain to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, New Jersey, at 7:30 p.m. The one-night performance opens the 2026 TD James Moody Jazz Festival, which runs November 6–22.
The Newark appearance follows Kumaar's November 5 concert with the World Music Institute in New York City, continuing a tour built around music, memory and one of the most significant creative partnerships in contemporary Indian music.
Hussain died in December 2024, leaving behind a legacy that reached well beyond the traditional boundaries of tabla and Indian classical music. His work with Kumaar was particularly distinctive: sitar and tabla meeting in a musical dialogue shaped by tradition, improvisation and an extraordinary ability to listen to one another.
That relationship sits at the heart of The Space Between the Notes.
The title recalls the 2017 documentary of the same name, which captured Kumaar and Hussain's musical partnership and offered audiences a glimpse into the relationship between two artists whose understanding extended beyond the music itself.
There is also a more recent recording at the centre of this project.
Recorded in 2023, Space Between the Notes is described by Moment Records as the first and only full-length album recording of Kumaar and Hussain together. With Hussain's passing, the recording has inevitably taken on another dimension: a musical moment preserved in time, allowing listeners to return to a conversation that can no longer take place on stage in quite the same way.
For Kumaar, however, this is not simply an exercise in looking backwards.
It is a continuation.
A fifth-generation sitarist, Kumaar began his training at the age of four under his father and guru, Pandit Kartick Kumaar. Decades of study and performance have given him a deep grounding in Indian classical music, while his career has continually explored what happens when that tradition meets contemporary sound.
Central to that exploration is the Zitar, the electric sitar created by Kumaar and now closely associated with his musical identity. It has allowed him to expand the instrument's sonic possibilities while retaining the musical foundations from which he emerged.
That balance, between inheritance and innovation, is one of the defining qualities of Kumaar's work.
He has built a career across Indian classical, contemporary, world and film music, releasing more than 16 albums and receiving major recognition for his work as a composer and performer. His honours include a Filmfare Award for film composition and the Sangeet Natak Akademi National Award.
But the most revealing measure of a musician is rarely found in a list of awards.
It is found in what they do with the tradition they have inherited.
Kumaar's answer has been to keep exploring.
Indian classical music carries centuries of history, discipline and musical philosophy. Yet tradition only remains alive when musicians continue to engage with it, challenge themselves within it and find new ways to communicate it.
Kumaar has spent much of his career doing precisely that.
And in Zakir Hussain, he found a musical partner who understood that language intimately.
Hussain's influence reached across cultures and generations. His command of the tabla helped place Indian percussion at the centre of musical conversations around the world, while his collaborations demonstrated how different traditions could meet without losing their individual identities.
With Kumaar, the conversation was especially intimate.
Sitar and tabla do not simply accompany one another. In the hands of musicians with this level of understanding, they respond, anticipate, challenge and leave room for one another.
That space matters.
For the Newark performance, Kumaar will perform on sitar and Zitar, joined by Agnelo Fernandes on keys, Sambit Chatterjee on drums and Satyajit Talwalkar on tabla. The programme will draw on original compositions and selections connected to his work with Hussain, bringing their shared musical language into the present.
There is inevitably an emotional dimension to performing music created with a friend, mentor and collaborator who is no longer there to share the stage.
But tribute does not have to mean standing still.
It can mean carrying something forward.
That is what makes this particular performance so compelling. The music Hussain helped create with Kumaar has not disappeared with his passing. It remains in recordings, memories, influence and in the musicians who continue to carry those ideas into new performances.
The notes remain.
So does the space between them.
And in that space, there is still a conversation.
NJPAC provides a fitting setting for that conversation. The Newark arts centre is a major cultural institution serving the city and the wider region, presenting artists and programmes across music, performance, education and community engagement. Its TD James Moody Jazz Festival brings together established artists, emerging voices and musical traditions from November 6 through 22.
The festival itself describes its purpose as celebrating the many sounds of jazz, and Kumaar's appearance adds another dimension to that musical conversation, one rooted in Indian classical tradition while reaching naturally towards contemporary and cross-cultural expression.
For those who knew Zakir Hussain's music, The Space Between the Notes offers a chance to revisit part of a remarkable artistic partnership.
For those discovering Niladri Kumaar for the first time, it offers something equally valuable: an introduction to an artist whose work demonstrates that tradition and innovation do not have to be opposing forces.
Sometimes they belong in the same phrase.
Sometimes remembrance becomes creation.
And sometimes, somewhere between one note and the next, the music finds a way to continue.
The Sound Cafe Journal
Where the story behind the music matters.
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Niladri Kumaar: The Space Between the Notes, Honouring Zakir Hussain
Friday, November 6, 2026, 7:30pm New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC)1 Center Street, Newark, New Jersey.
The performance is part of the 2026 TD James Moody Jazz Festival, running November 6 - 22. Tickets and event information are available through NJPAC.
