Ravi Shankar was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known exponent 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.
Ali Akbar Khan was an Indian Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod. Trained as a classical musician and instrumentalist by his father, Allauddin Khan, he also composed numerous classical ragas and film scores. He established a music school in Calcutta in 1956, and the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967, which moved with him to the United States and is now based in San Rafael, California, with a branch in Basel, Switzerland.
Allauddin Khan, also known as Baba Allauddin Khan was a Bengali sarod player and multi-instrumentalist, composer and one of the most notable music teachers of the 20th century in Indian classical music.
Pandit Nikhil Ranjan Banerjee was an Indian classical sitarist of the Maihar Gharana. Along with Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilayat Khan, he emerged as one of the leading exponents of the sitar. He was a recipient of the Indian civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan.
Imrat Khan was an Indian sitar and surbahar player and composer. He was the younger brother of sitar maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan.
Annapurna Devi was an Indian surbahar player of Hindustani classical music. She was given the name 'Annapurna' by former Maharaja Brijnath Singh of the former Maihar Estate (M.P.), and it was by this name that she was popularly known. She was the daughter and disciple of Allauddin Khan, the founder of Maihar gharana, and Madina Bibi and the first wife of the sitar player Ravi Shankar. After her separation from Ravi Shankar, she moved to Bombay and never performed again in public. She remained a private person, yet continued to teach music for free. Her students include many notable disciples including Hariprasad Chaurasia, Nityanand Haldipur and Nikhil Banerjee.
The Ali Akbar College of Music (AACM) is the name of three schools founded by Indian musician Ali Akbar Khan to teach Indian classical music. The first was founded in 1956 in Calcutta, India. The second was founded in 1967 in Berkeley, California, but moved to its current location in San Rafael, California the next year. The third was founded in 1985 in Basel, Switzerland, and is run by Khan's disciple Ken Zuckerman.
Aashish Khan Debsharma is an Indian classical musician, a player of the sarod. He was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2006 in the 'Best World Music' category for his album "Golden Strings of the Sarode". He is also a recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. Besides being a performer, composer, and conductor, he is also an adjunct professor of Indian classical music at the California Institute of the Arts, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, in the United States.
Ustad Bahadur Khan was an Indian sarod player and film score composer.
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.
Nishat Khan is an Indian sitar player from an illustrious musical family and the foremost sitar virtuoso of his generation. 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.
Ravi Shankar had numerous solo recordings published, including these:
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. In 2017, Khan was awarded Pakistan's third highest civilian honour, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz.
Steve Oda is a sarod player, composer and teacher of the Hindustani classical music.
In Concert 1972 is a double live album by sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar and sarodya Ali Akbar Khan, released in 1973 on Apple Records. It was recorded at the Philharmonic Hall, New York City, in October 1972, and is a noted example of the two Hindustani classical musicians' celebrated jugalbandi (duet) style of playing. With accompaniment from tabla player Alla Rakha, the performance reflects the two artists' sorrow at the recent death of their revered guru, and Khan's father, Allauddin Khan. The latter was responsible for many innovations in Indian music during the twentieth century, including the call-and-response dialogue that musicians such as Shankar, Khan and Rakha popularised among Western audiences in the 1960s.
Robert Belgrade is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, music educator and narrator, best known as the original English dubbing voice acting for Alucard in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and as the announcer in several entries of the Tekken series. He was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. After initial studies on piano, trumpet and flute, he focused on saxophone and bass clarinet, studying with clarinetist Don O'Brian and saxophonist John Handy. He continued his musical studies at the Ali Akbar College of Music, studying vocal music under Ali Akbar Khan and tabla under Zakir Hussain, Alla Rakha and Swapan Chaudhuri. Other teachers include Vince Delgado (riqq), Marcos Suzano (pandeiro), Panga and David Merrill (piano). He has shared the stage with such diverse musicians as Kenny Burrell and Enrique Iglesias.
Naubat Khan was an Indian classical music composer, musician and instrumentalist who was made a Mansabdar by Mughal Emperor Akbar. He is known today for his skills with the rudra veena or bīn, which he is shown playing in paintings by Mughal court artists.Naubat Khan was the contemporary and son in law of legendary Tansen.
Ravi Shankar's Festival from India is a double album by Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar, released on World Pacific Records in December 1968. It contains studio recordings made by a large ensemble of performers, many of whom Shankar had brought to the United States from India. Among the musicians were Shivkumar Sharma, Jitendra Abhisheki, Palghat Raghu, Lakshmi Shankar, Aashish Khan and Alla Rakha. The project presented Indian classical music in an orchestral setting, so recalling Shankar's work as musical director of All India Radio in the years before he achieved international fame as a soloist during the 1960s.
The Kinnara School of Music was a music school founded in Bombay, India, in 1962 by Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar. With his increased popularity and influence in the West, he opened a second branch of the school in Los Angeles in May 1967. Shankar's concept for Kinnara was to further the strict guru–shishya tradition of musical education that he had experienced under his teacher, Allauddin Khan, in the 1940s. The Bombay centre staged productions of orchestral works by Shankar, including Nava Rasa Ranga.
The San Francisco Bay Area has the second-largest Indian-American population in the United States after the New York metropolitan area. The Bay Area Asian Indian population is primarily concentrated in the Santa Clara Valley, with San Jose having the highest population of Asian Indians in raw numbers as 2010, while Cupertino, Fremont, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara have the largest concentrations. The South Bay-based 17th congressional district, represented by Indian-American Ro Khanna has the largest Asian Indian population of any congressional district in the United States. In 2010, Indian-Americans were the fastest growing minority population in the Bay Area.
