Khan, Ali Akbar
Khan, Ali Akbar
(älē` ăk`bär khän), 1922–2009, Indian musician, b. Shivpur, East Bengal (now Bangladesh). A master of the sarod, a lutelike 25-stringed N Indian instrument, Khan was born into a family whose roots in traditional Indian court music extend back to the 16th cent. Trained by his father, Alauddin Khan, a famous musician and teacher, the younger Khan began performing at 13, was appointed court musician to the maharaja of Jodhpur, and became a well-known virtuoso. The violinist Yehudi MenuhinMenuhin, Yehudi, 1916–99, British violinist and conductor, b. New York City. Menuhin, an extraordinary prodigy, began playing the violin at four. He made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at seven, then studied in Europe with Adolf Busch and Georges
..... Click the link for more information. heard Khan play in Delhi in 1955 and invited the young musician to the United States. There he performed classical Indian music in concert and on television and made his first recordings, helping to spur the genre's popularity in the West during the 1960s and thereafter. Khan produced nearly 100 albums and performed frequently, sometimes with his brother-in-law, sitarist Ravi ShankarShankar, Ravi
(Robindra Shankar Chowdhury), 1920–2012, Indian sitarist and composer, b. Varanasi. He was the first Indian instrumentalist to attain an international reputation and is credited with introducing traditional Indian music to the West.
..... Click the link for more information. . He composed numerous ragas and wrote the scores for several films, e.g., Satyajit Ray's Devi (1960) and Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993). Khan founded colleges of classical Indian music in Kolkata (1956), San Rafael, Calif. (1967), and Basel, Switzerland (1985), and established (1994) a music foundation.