From Palm Beach County, Florida to her home in New York City today, violinist Sahana Shravan hopes to build a career that explores how art can build community and collaboration not just between artists, but between audiences and performers. Sahana's musical work spans modern and historical performance practice, classical music of North and South India, and concert curation.
Chamber music has been at the heart of Sahana's musicianship since the first time she played in a string quartet at the age of 13. Her beloved chamber music mentors include Natasha Brofsky, Orli Shaham, members of the Brentano Quartet, Emile Naumoff, and Roger Tapping. She enjoys performing with a number of chamber ensembles in the tristate area, including Washington Heights Chamber Players, Orchestra Q, Reverie Baroque, and the Mystic Chamber Music Series, and has had the pleasure of performing and teaching with the Callisto and Ivalas string quartets. She was a member of the Marian String Quartet from 2021–2023, and performed across the United States in venues ranging from Alice Tully Hall to Madeline Island Chamber Music to coffee shops in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Marian String Quartet won Gold Prize at the St. Paul String Quartet Competition in 2022.
Sahana began teaching many years ago as an assistant to her first Suzuki teacher Richard Coff, but she discovered a passion for community engagement through fellowship programs that took her (alongside ensemble members and co-teachers) to most of the five boroughs, teaching students of all grades as well as playing for folks at institutions across the city. She gets to use this pedagogy in different professional capacities as a teaching artist for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the nonprofit organization Concerts for Compassion, and as violin faculty at the United Nations International School. She has also served on faculty at Rocky Ridge Music's Junior Artist Intensive, BRAVO Workshop Buffalo, and Hudson Montessori Conservatory Chamber Music Intensive.
Though Sahana has an education in and passion for classical Western music, she comes from a family steeped in Carnatic music of South India. The diverse skills and aesthetics of these two styles has led to playing the works of the Western canon while embracing the worlds of other genres. Most recently, she had the incredible experience of using both her Western and Carnatic training as a musician on The Lunchbox, a musical based on the award-winning 2013 movie, during its first run at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She has collaborated with artists such as composer Reena Esmail, the California-based kathak company Leela Dance Collective, saxophonist Eddie Barbash, and Kalaimamani Sikkil Gurucharan.
Sahana received her Bachelors and Masters degrees from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Areta Zhulla and Catherine Cho and was the recipient of a Kovner Fellowship for her graduate studies. In addition to studying modern violin, she studied Baroque performance with Cynthia Roberts and Robert Mealy. Her pursuit of artistic citizenship has led to accolades such as the Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant, the first inaugural Joan D. Warren Prize for Student Leadership and Civic Engagement, and the Joseph W. Polisi Prize for Artist as Citizen. In 2025, she was recognized as a Van Lier Fellowship Artist of Exceptional Merit by the Asian American Arts Alliance.
Sahana can generally be found reading, exploring other genres of music, the outdoors in any form, and puzzling over that day's New York Times games. Her recent hobbies have included being very bad at the mandolin, learning kathak dance and Carnatic violin, and climbing.