How It All Began
Anoushka Divekar (she/her/hers) is a first-generation American who remembers coming home to hearing her mom singing Hindustani Classical Music, as her dad played Tabla. Her love for music was early and nurtured well. She started clarinet at the age of 10, after two years of learning violin and piano. While she developed a love for performing, and a great fondness for the teachers who had supported her endeavors, she’d tell her mom that her music was “wrong” upon coming home. However, she was so taken by the art form that she therefore began study at the University of Colorado Boulder in Clarinet Performance and Music Education. Throughout her degree, she noticed many inequities in the school system, leading her to question the way she was taught, and her cognitive dissonance about her own Indian heritage.
Anoushka also grew to acknowledge the many privileges she held, which allowed her to pursue her passions. Performing many recitals and concerts led her to realize that the works of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ people, and women were consistently left out of the music that she played, and the faces she saw in her schools. Throughout her undergraduate, she was part of CU Boulder’s Diverse Musicians’ Alliance, a group that sought to normalize and amplify all voices in the realm of music making. She is a part of the clarinetrepertoire.com team, continuing Dr. Maggie Greenwood’s dissertation of cataloguing a database of clarinet works written by people with a range of gender identities in an effort for them to be played on more clarinet recitals. This led her to creating the Take Two Knees concert, and pledging to play works by all kinds of composers on her programs.
Anoushka graduated in May 2020 from the University of Colorado Boulder. She currently attends Texas Tech University in pursuit of a Masters in Clarinet Performance with a Clarinet Teaching Assistantship. Her primary teachers are Dr. David Shea, Professor Daniel Silver, and Dr. Christine Bellomy. She has attended Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Eastern Music Festival, and Rocky Ridge Music Festival, and has performed most recently with the CU Boulder’s Symphony Orchestra, and the top Wind Ensembles at both CU Boulder and TTU. She serves as principal clarinet in the virtual Dad Village Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, she won first prize in the International Clarinet Association's Clareidoscope Festival Collegiate Category Essay Competition and Performance Competition in April of 2021.
Anoushka looks forward to a future of performing and teaching. Anoushka is a classroom and private teacher and has now become adept at teaching both in person, and online. She is passionate about social justice, and restorative justice education and feels compelled to use music as a vehicle to make change.
