The Greater Cincinnati Indian Community Choir is a unique venture exploring polyphonic avenues in rAga based music. It has also been a very successful attempt in building community around music.

The first choral experiments were with Basant, a musical theater production that was performed in 1994. The next major choral performance of rAga based music was 'Chants for Peace' in the year 2000.

What started off as a committed group of people meeting to enhance their choral repertoire, grew into a group of about 85 singers of Indian origin, who shared choral singing with two other community choruses in what was the highly acclaimed multi-media musical Shanti - A journey of peace.

Shanti was performed again at the Aronoff Center for Performing Arts, to a packed house of 2500 in Cincinnati in March 2006. Kanniks made several trips to the Lehigh Valley area where he worked with the local community.

Kanniks inspired the formation of the Lehigh valley Indian community choir What started off as a committed group of workshop attendees grew into a sizeable group of singers of Indian origin from the surrounding area, who shared choral singing with singers from local choruses in what turned out to be yet another spectacular performance of Shanti in May 2006 at Lehigh University to a packed Zoellner Arts Center, Bethlehem PA.  Shanti was performed again in October 2008, hosted this time by the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, in the presence of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati.

Kanniks will be working with such community choirs being formed elsewhere in the United States in 2009 and 2010. The choral sessions allow participants to get exposed to various rAgas that form the basis of Indian classical music. The simplicity of the parts make it a pleasurable learning experience and over a period of time, the choir acquires the ability to handle complex musical scales and themes.