As a composer and music producer he has collaborated with some of the world's leading musicians such as Paco Peña, John McLaughlin, Philip Glass and Evelyn Glennie. His sitar concerto "Gate of the Moon" premiered with the BBC National Orchestra for the Proms at Royal Albert Hall in 2013.[1][2]
Early life
Khan was born on 25 October 1960 in Park Circus area of Kolkata, India in a house on a road named after his grandfather 'Ustad Enayat Khan Avenue'. He is the son of the sitar player Imrat Khan and the nephew of the legendary sitar player Vilayat Khan, who come from the leading family of instrumental music in the North Indian classical tradition, the Etawah gharana.[3][4] With seven generations of sitar and surbahar (bass sitar) players, they directly influenced the evolution of sitar up to the present day.[5][1]
Nishat Khan started playing the sitar at the age of 3 and gave his first concert at the age of 7 in Kolkata.[1][3]Riyaaz (practice) was rigorous, disciplined and enjoyable, often playing late into the night. He was always around music and there was no conversation without it, all his entertainment was centered on music. Nishat learned from his father and his guru, responsible for initiating his career, though his uncle Vilayat Khan was a great influence and inspiration for him. He even skipped school to play sitar, and his father agreed to let him practice instead. Of course he attended a lot of concerts, as his family was always having visiting musicians and friends and when he returned home, an analysis of what he heard and “taalim” (training) would start.[5]
He first performed live in a duet with John McLaughlin in 1986 in Italy, who subsequently featured him on his 1993 album The Promise.[6] With Philip Glass, he performed a comparative piece with opera and Nishat's raga Germany in 1993. In early 2000, Nishat began a unique collaboration with Paco Peña featuring Flamenco and sitar, with several tours in the UK and Europe as part of his group Spirit & Passion. With Evelyn Glennie, he performed at two concerts – one with BBC Scottish Symphony, a special piece Khan composed called Dancing with Seagulls. This was also performed in London at Wigmore Hall. Khan has also composed and recorded sitar and vocals on the rock song Love is the Answer by Weezer in 2009.
The world premiere of Nishat Khan's Sitar Concerto no. 1 The Gate of the Moon featured as part of the BBCProms programme at the Royal Albert Hall on 12 August 2013. The occasion was Khan's third appearance as a soloist at The Proms but was the first time showcasing one of his own orchestral compositions. The work integrates a sitar concerto with Western orchestration to tell the love story between the mystical "unknown traveller" (sitar) and the princess. David Atherton conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the performance of The Gate of the Moon, which was broadcast live on both BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Asian network. He gave the US premiere of the work in February 2018, with the Seattle Symphony.[7]
In 2015, he performed at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC and at a concert at the Budapest Festival 2015. He has also collaborated with the artist-sculptor Anish Kapoor in London. In 2016, he visited Tehran with the Prime Minister's delegation and performed a solo concert at the Vahdat Hall. He also performed at the Barbican Hall in London the same year. In Delhi, on 18 November 2016, he performed with Jasraj and Kishori Amonkar.[4] On 8 October 2017, he performed at the Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Music Centre in Manhattan. He also opened the Sixth Edition of the Delhi Classical Music Festival in October 2017. He was also invited to perform at the prestigious US Ravinia Festival, UK Aldeburgh Festival,[8] and the Virée Festival in Montréal, Canada.[9]
Versatility in music
The son and disciple of Imrat Khan, Nishat stands at the threshold of the future of sitar and Indian music with his uniquely invigorating, contemporary approach. He draws on his own musical heritage as well as engages other genres as diverse as Western classical music, jazz, Flamenco and Gregorian chant. His groundbreaking album Meeting of Angels with Gregorian chant Ensemble Gilles Binchois and sitar has become one of the most successful world music albums and a unique collaboration, which was also performed at the Proms in 2008 with the BBC Singers,[10][11] and subsequently toured around the world with top choirs.
He composed the music for the album “Jaan Meri” with singer Anuradha Palakurthi,[1] of which the title track won 2019 Song of the Year, Independent Music Category Award at the prestigious Radio Mirchi Music Awards, the Indian equivalent of the Grammys.[12]
Films
In 2011, he composed his first Bollywood film score, Yeh Saali Zindagi,[1] for the director Sudhir Mishra. In 2013, the Indian Government commissioned him to write a 70-minute orchestral score for the Indian silent film, A Throw of Dice.[1] The work was commissioned especially for performance at the Centenary Film Festival, which celebrates 100 years of Indian cinema.[1]
"Nishat Khan's new Sitar Concerto offered an altogether more meditative engagement with India. This sitar legend (just the latest in a dynasty of great musicians in his family) is a familiar face at the Proms, but he has never before appeared as both composer and soloist. The concerto itself follows in the footsteps of Ravi Shankar's concerto, marrying the textures and techniques of Indian classical music with the instrumentation and symphonic structure of western music." — Alexandra Coghlan, The Arts Desk, 13 August 2013
"Nishat Khan himself and the orchestra gave an exemplary account of the concerto. The charismatic presence of Khan on his podium dominated the whole performance and his interactions with the orchestra were fascinating, genuinely touching and exciting by turns." — Chris Garlick, Bachtrack, 14 August 2013
"Khan's playing emerged from and receded into the textures like the mysterious traveller, the sitar was meant to represent. Although his performance cohered exactly with the mood and tempo of the orchestra, it also embodied a sense of autonomy from external constraints, not least by the resonance of its sympathetic strings outlasting all other tones, and by the increasingly virtuosic strumming towards the end, compounding the impression of a source of dynamic energy whose origins are unfathomable." - Curtis Rogers, Classicalsource.com, August 2013
"The main event of the evening was the world premiere of Nishat Khan's The Gate of the Moon.[1] Like Ravi Shankar before him, this Calcutta-born sitar player has been impelled to create a sitar concerto with Western orchestration: with amplification, the two elements can be brought to a sort of parity. Nishat Khan was invited to puff his piece beforehand and did so fulsomely, describing his instrument as 'the unknown traveler introducing a mystical and positive energy'." — Michael Church, The Independent, 13 August 2013
Personal life
He has been touring continuously since the age of 17 and has resided in India, Italy, France, UK and the United States. He was an invited Visiting Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003 and California State University at Long Beach in 2005. He has lectured at universities around the world, including College of DuPage, UMass Amherst, UC Santa Cruz, Princeton University, Kent State University, Dartington College of Arts in London, Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin and many other prestigious institutions. He has a daughter named Inaya Khan. He has three brothers who are themselves accomplished musicians, and one sister.
Ravi Shankar was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known expert of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. He is also the father of American singer Norah Jones.
Anoushka Hemangini Shankar is a British-American sitar player and musician of Indian descent, as well as occasional writer. She performs across multiple genres and styles—classical and contemporary, acoustic and electronic. In addition to releasing seven solo studio albums beginning with Anoushka (1998), she has also worked alongside a wide variety of musicians, including Karsh Kale on the full-length collaboration Breathing Under Water (2007) and her father Ravi Shankar. She has received nine Grammy Awards nominations and was the first musician of Indian origin to perform live and to serve as a presenter at the ceremony. She was the youngest and first woman to receive a British House of Commons Shield.
Imrat Khan was an Indian sitar and surbahar player and composer. He was the younger brother of sitar maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan.
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Wajahat Khan is an Indian sarod player and composer who has earned international acclaim since 1977. He is the third son and disciple of sitar and surbahar player Imrat Khan, nephew of sitar player Vilayat Khan and a member of India's illustrious multi-generational musical Khan family which founded the Imdadkhani Gharana. He was born in the mid-1960s in Calcutta, India and now divides his time between London and India.
Irshad Khan is an Indian classical surbahar and sitar player based in Canada. He is the second son of Imrat Khan and nephew of Vilayat Khan.
Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee is an Indian classical sitar and surbahar maestro of the Imdadkhani gharana (school), recognizable by his intricate vocalic playing complemented by spectacular high speed playing. He holds a unique distinction of being the ever first artist in history to perform in the House of Commons, London. Famously proclaimed the "sitar artist of the century" by veena great Balachander, he has performed in thousands of concerts since the 1970s in India, America, Australia, the UAE, and almost all of Europe.
While the sitar had earlier been used in jazz and Indian film music, it was from the 1960s onwards that various pop artists in the Western world began to experiment with incorporating the sitar, a classical Indian stringed instrument, within their compositions.
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Shashank Subramanyam is a Grammy-nominated exponent of the Bamboo Flute from India and specialises in Indian Classical Music. He is a recipient of the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knighthood) by Govt of France 2022 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi's senior award by Govt. of India bestowed by the Hon. President of India for the year 2017 at an investiture ceremony held at Rashtrapathi Bhavan in New Delhi.
Kirit Khan was a Bengali-Indian sitar player.
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Ustad Vilayat Khan was an Indian classical sitar player, considered by many to be the greatest sitarist of his age. Along with Imdad Khan, Enayat Khan, and Imrat Khan, he is credited with the creation and development of gayaki ang on the sitar.
Ustad Rais Khan was a Pakistani sitarist. At his peak he was regarded as one of the greatest sitar players of all time. He continued performing till his last days. He moved from India to Pakistan in 1986, where he took up Pakistani citizenship.
Arvind Parikh is an Indian classical sitar player.
Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan was an Indian sitar player. Khan received the national awards Padma Shri (1970) and Padma Bhushan (2006) and was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 1987.
Abdul Sattar Khan, popularly known as Ustad Tari Khan, is a Pakistani tabla player and vocalist. Tari Khan hails from the Punjab gharana and is the student of Ustad Miyan Shaukat Hussain. He has been awarded with many accolades such as Taj Poshi, the Hazrat Amir Khusrow Award, as well as Pakistan's Pride of Performance Award in 2008. Tari Khan belongs to the tabla playing gharana called the Punjab gharana. Today, he is acknowledged as one of the foremost Tabla players of all time by musicians all over the world.
Ustad Rafique Khan is an Indian musician and composer who plays the sitar. He belongs to the sixth generation of musicians from the Dharwad Gharana. His father, the late Ustad Abdul Karim Khan was a distinguished sitarist at his time, and his grandfather who was awarded the 'Sitar Ratna', Rahimat Khan was accredited for adding the base octave to the sitar and for modifying the three-string sitar to the seven-string instrument that is common today. Khan is the younger brother of Ustad Bale Khan and Chhote Rahimat Khan and has a twin brother, Shafique Khan, also a sitarist.
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