Adrian McNeil

Adrian McNeil is an Australian sarod player and ethnomusicologist specialising in Hindustani music. He began training in 1980 as a disciple of the sarodiya Pandit Ashok Roy, himself a long-time disciple of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and studied with him in Dehra Dun, Melbourne and later Sydney until Roy's death in 2014. Based in Kolkata from 1996 to 2001, he moved to Mumbai in 2001 to study with the sitariya Prof. Sachindra Nath Roy, Ashok Roy's uncle, and also studied classical vocal music with the musicologist Dr. Ashok Ranade; since 2023 he has learned the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur sarod repertoire from Ustad Irfan Khan. He has performed at the India International Centre in Delhi, the Sydney Opera House, the Melbourne Recital Centre and the Musee Guimet in Paris, and his intercultural recording Improvisations (ABC/Universal) was an ARIA finalist. The author of Inventing the Sarod, he has held teaching and research positions at Macquarie University, the University of Melbourne and Jadavpur University, directed the musicology and ethnomusicology program at Monash University, and since 2024 has been Dr. C.W.W. Visiting Professor at the University of Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo, Sri Lanka.