Vineet Shende’s music often deals with conceptual issues of timbral development, structural order, and the Japanese aesthetic concept of ma (“active” space and time).  Shende’s music incorporates a wide variety of styles, including the modal and rhythmic world of North Indian classical music, the visceral energy of rock music, and a harmonic language described as “hard to characterize, dissonant in some places and with celestial harmonies in others.

Shende’s formative years alternated between the cities of Chicago, Illinois and Pune, India.  His earliest music lessons were from his mother, a vocalist trained in North Indian classical music.  He holds degrees from Cornell University, Butler University, and Grinnell College.  His principal composition teachers have been Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Michael Schelle, and Jonathan Chenette.  He has also studied music with sitar virtuoso Ustad Usman Khan and conducting with Stanley DeRusha and Scott Tucker.

Shende is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Music Department at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he teaches courses in composition, electronic music, orchestration, music theory, music history, and Asian music.