T.L. Mazumdar

Thirty years in. Still here. Still making the work.

I am a musician, songwriter, and educator with more than thirty years of professional experience as a touring artist, recording artist, and collaborator. I have self-produced and released four albums, written under a Warner Chappell publishing interest, and been nominated for the Bremer Jazzpreis.

Somewhere along the way I survived a serious health crisis that should have ended things. It became a turning point instead. The way I work now — with my own art and with the artists I coach — was shaped by what that period taught me about sustainability, identity, and the difference between performing a career and actually living inside one.

I built the Holistic Musician Academy to pass on the things the industry leaves out of the conversation. I am based in Berlin, and I still perform and record.

The long way around, and why it mattered

I have been signed to labels in three countries. I walked away from a permanent tenure with the German government — the kind of position most working musicians would consider a finish line — because it was not the work I was here to do.

In between, I navigated bureaucracy across borders, built a career as an international artist and educator, and learned several languages well enough to teach in them. I also broke stereotypes about what an Indian-German musician was supposed to sound like, look like, or be allowed to do.

Then the health crisis arrived. Morbid obesity, heart disease, eating disorders, repetitive strain injuries, and a mental health collapse that nearly ended things. I came back from it without medication and without surgery, through training and a serious reckoning with how I had been living.

I made a promise to myself somewhere in that period. If I made it back, I would teach others to swim. The Holistic Musician Academy is me keeping that promise.