Ali Akbar Khan
Ali Akbar Khan ( Bengali : আলী আকবর খান , Ālī Ākbar Khān ; born February 14, 1922 in Shibpur, East Bengal ; † June 19, 2009 in San Francisco , California ) was an Indian musician and composer.
Life
Ali Akbar Khan was born in the village of Shibpur in the Kumilla district of eastern Bengal and grew up in Maihar . At the age of three, his father Allauddin Khan , who was the court musician of the Maharajas of Maihar , began teaching him singing and later his main instrument, the sarod . According to Ali Akbar Khan, he received lessons up to 16 hours a day for over 20 years.
Ali Akbar Khan made his first public appearance in Allahabad when he was 13 . At the age of 17, he appeared at the All-India Music Conference in Allahabad in 1939, a memorable event for classical North Indian music , as there the sarod had acquired a new meaning through him. In his early twenties he became court musician for the Maharaja of Jodhpur . There he was given the title of Ustādh (virtuoso, master). At times he was the teacher of Nikhil Banerjee . After his patron, the Maharaja of Jodhpur Hanwant Singh , was killed in a plane crash in 1952, he went to Bombay , where he also composed the score for Chetan Anands Aandhiyan (1952). His later work for the film was made for Bengali films by Ritwik Ghatak , Tapan Sinha and Satyajit Ray as well as early works by James Ivory .
At the invitation of Sir Yehudi Menuhin , Ali Akbar Khan came to the United States for the first time in 1955 and made Indian classical music known in the West.
Ali Akbar Khan composed the music for the Bernardo Bertolucci film Little Buddha and other films. Together with the sitar player Ravi Shankar he played in 1971 at the Concert for Bangladesh . With the jazz saxophonist John Handy he recorded the records Karuna Supreme (1975, with, among others, Zakir Hussain ) and Rainbow (1980, with, among others, L. Subramaniam ). His life's work has been preserved on numerous recordings.
Ali Akbar gave lessons in Hindustan music from 1956 in his own music school in Kolkata . In 1967 he opened the Ali Akbar College of Music, now in San Rafael , California , and in 1985 another school in Basel ( Switzerland ).
family
Khan's younger sister Annapurna Devi married the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar and became a master of the surbahar , but the convention forbade her to perform in public. Ali Akbar Khan was married three times, leaving behind his wife Mary, seven sons and four daughters. His eldest son, Aashish Khan, is also a recognized sarod player.
Awards
- In 1989 he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan , India's second highest civil order.
- In 1991 he was the first Indian musician to receive the MacArthur Fellowship (better known as the Genius Award ) from the MacArthur Foundation .
- 1992 Sangeet Natak Akademi Ratna
Web links
- Ali Akbar College of Music
- Ali Akbar Khan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Works by and about Ali Akbar Khan in the catalog of the German National Library
- "Ali Akbar Khan, the sarod virtuoso, this at 87" , New York Times 19 June 2009
- "Ustad Ali Akbar Khan" , Daily Telegraph , 21 June 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ Soumyadipta Banerjee: "Legendary sarod maestro Ali Akbar no more" , Daily News & Analysis, June 19, 2009.
- ↑ According to other information, he went to Bombay as early as 1948.
- ↑ discography .
- ^ A b William Grimes: Ali Akbar Khan, Sarod Virtuoso, Dies at 87 , New York Times , June 19, 2009.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Khan, Ali Akbar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | খান, আলী আকবর (Bengali); Khān, Ālī Ākbar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Indian musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 14, 1922 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Shibpur , East Bengal |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 19, 2009 |
| Place of death | San Francisco , California |