Trikal Arts academy

Trikal Arts academy
4, near Metro Hospital & Heart Institute, Block X, Sector 12, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
https://trikalartacademy.in/
Trikal Arts Academy nestles on the fourth floor of a mustard-yellow Indo-Portuguese mansion on the banks of the Chapora River in North Goa, five languid kilometres inland from Vagator Beach. The building itself—once a private musical salon for the da Silva family—was refitted in 2019 with reclaimed teak doors, jade-green floor tiles, and 18-foot movable shutters that open to river gusts carrying cardamom and clove. Inside, the main rehearsal hall can seat eighty on fold-cushions woven by local Mapusa weavers; the micro-garnet speakers are suspended in rattan cages so sound courses through the room the way tide creeps across sand.

Three smaller studios flank the hall: one matted for Hindustani vocal or tabla, another wired for electronic hybrid projects, and the last lined with six vintage Wurlitzer keys donated by a Mangalore jazz merchant. Every wall is acoustic-active—bamboo veneer over cork that can be slid open to reveal deeper tamarind-wood resonance chambers. Daylight passes through bottle-bottom skylights, splattering colour onto the hardwood in slowly shifting discs of sea-glass turquoise and mango amber.

Programmes fall into four seasonal cycles. Monsoon (June-August) is immersive, six-week “Sāv Rabột” residencies where five participants co-compose a river-inspired suite performed on full-moon nights; the academy covers lodging at a tile-roofed bungalow nearby. Post-monsoon focuses on folk-dialogue workshops—Goan mandó meets Tuareg tindé, or Kerala chenda refracted through Berlin techno. Winter begins a four-month graded curriculum: morning raag theory on the verandah with palm-leaf rustle for metronome, afternoon ensemble scoring under the Gulmohar tree whose pods are used as shaker percussion. Spring is bazaar-month: travelling pop-up stages in Mapusa market where alumni trade new tracks for local produce.

Evenings at Trikal feel like semi-open gatherings. The cafe-bar (run by Parra sisters Mareena and Lila) ferments sugar-cane hibiscus kombucha and serves bhaji tama that crackles under violin-pluck influences from whichever genre is rehearsing next door. Vinyl night every thursday rotates rare Kashmiri folk, São Tomé guitar loops, and Konkani torch songs, all pressed onto acetate on the in-house lathe. Visitors can borrow headphones from a hollowed-out tanpura shell to listen in quiet niches overlooking the river.

Fees float on a sliding scale negotiated over a shared cup of feni: approximately EUR 120 per week for visitors, INR 400/day for state residents, with work-exchange threshing rice or repairing fishing nets to offset cost. Scholarships named after late tabla maestro Shabbir Khan cover full travel and residency for two candidates yearly. Reach Trikal by a short ferry from Siolim then rented scooter along a coconut tunnel framed by white cattle egrets; GPS will mislead you, so follow the faint thump of Mridangam-compass that drifts upstream at dusk.

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