Shaagnik Mukherji has been surrounded by music and art his whole life. His mother, a trained dancer in Odissi, an Indian classical dance, opened her own dance school out of the family home in Maryland when he and his sister were babies. His extended family, scattered throughout the world, includes dancers, writers, and designers along with Rabindrath Tagore, the acclaimed Bengali poet, musician, philosopher, and activist. Shaagnik began learning the bass guitar at age 15, and the guitar, piano, and a number of other instruments soon followed. Since middle school, he has always been performing music, whether with a high school jazz quintet or the post-rock band Castles.

Shaagnik attended the University of Michigan for Computer Science and, after graduation and several months in India studying the Esraj with Abir Singh, he returned to Washington, D.C. to work as a computer programmer. For the next decade he played music as a hobby until he quit his job to move to New York and pursue his Master's in Music Technology from NYU. The program opened his eyes to the possibilities of not just music, but sound — from custom guitar pedals to making monster noises for horror films, Shaagnik is passionate about storytelling through new and unique applications of sound, challenging audiences to look outside conventional wisdom of what music is and isn’t to discover something new about themselves.

Skills: