Sandeep Bhagwati is a composer, artist, curator and writer. Born in Mumbai to a German mother and Indian father, Bhagwati grew up in Germany from the age of 5. He studied at the Mozarteum Salzburg, the Musikhochschule Munich and IRCAM/Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. He is a composer of contemporary music, develops trans-traditional musical ways of working out, explores new performative forms using electronic media works in multimedia performance and installation.
He publishes texts on the current situation of the arts and writes radio contributions. The theoretical and artistic examination of the musical cultures of Asia is a focal point of his work. He was a professor of composition at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe and since 2006 has held the Canada Research Chair in Inter-X Art Practice and Theory at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.

He was Composer-in-residence at the 2014 Time of Music Festival in Viitasaari, and the Société de Musique Contemporaine de Quebec SMCQ has honoured him with a “Saison Hommage 2023/24”.

Between 2013 and 2019, Bhagwati has created and led several trans-traditional ensembles in cities such as Berlin (Extrakte), Montréal (Sound of Montréal), Toronto (Swara Sutras), Pune (Sangeet Prayog), Oslo (Oslo Musics) and led successful transtraditional projects with existing ensembles such as Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam, China Found Music Workshop (Taipei) Klangforum Wien, Neue Vokalsolisten (Stuttgart), Hezarfen (Istanbul), Constantinople (Montréal), tölöläb (Helsinki), Kairos Quartet (Berlin), Guerilla Classics (Zurich). One of the intentions in founding Śabdagatitāra is to interconnect all these different musical roots and flowerings into a trans-traditional rhizome of collaborating musicians, artists and music thinkers.