Arun Luthra

Arun Luthra is a New York-based saxophonist, konnakol artist, composer, and arranger. Arun Luthra has been one of the premiere saxophonists and composers on New York’s jazz scene for well over a decade. He is one of the small group of American jazz musicians of Indian heritage who have continued to explore to possibilities of fusing the modern post-bop sound with elements of Indian classical music, as well drawing from a wide variety of modern & classic musical influences to create a vibrant new sound & style.

Arun Luthra was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.A. of an Indian father and a British mother. He began his formal music training in Belgium at the age of nine, studying European classical guitar. He eventually focused on the saxophone as his primary instrument and soon began an active performing and writing career.

As a performer he has shared the stage and recorded with many of the greatest jazz, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and pop artists in the world, including Billy Harper, Eddie Henderson, Kenny Garrett, Mike Stern, Dennis Irwin, Joe Chambers, Charli Persip, Bobby Porcelli, Portinho, Zé Renato, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Frankie Valli, Bobby Short, Lew Soloff, and Bernard Purdie.

Luthra has also performed and/or studied with such notable Hindustani and Karnatic music masters as Pandit Trichy Sankaran, Pandit Samir Chatterjee, Krishnan Lalgudi & Vijayalakshmi Lalgudi, Pandit Karaikudi Subramaniam, Steve Gorn, Kiran Ahluwalia, Sufi singer Zila Khan, and the iconic 1970′s Indian cross-over star Asha Puthli.

As a recording artist Luthra has been featured as a band leader, composer, arranger, and sideman. In addition to his career as a performer, composer, and arranger, Luthra is also a faculty member at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York alongside such jazz and world music greats as Reggie Workman, Chico Hamilton, and Junior Mance, and Bobby Sanabria.

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