Tag: pandit shiv kumar sharma

Hi, and Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma

Hi. I’m new here. Usu­al­ly I bur­ble spo­rad­i­cal­ly and semi-coher­ent­ly on Drinks-After-Work; I’m look­ing for­ward to the chal­lenge of step­ping up to the plate and mak­ing sense most of the time.

Posters for this went up last night (sor­ry for the stink image — I can’t find any­thing on the web so far):

Pan­dit Shiv Kumar Shar­ma is the pio­neer of the Kash­miri san­toor (Indi­an ham­mered dul­cimer) and was (heh) instru­men­tal in it’s accep­tance into the hal­lowed pan­theon of Indi­an clas­si­cal music (read about it). At 69 he is the acknowl­edged mas­ter of san­toor; indeed he is vir­tu­al­ly syn­ony­mous with it. Using a 100-string san­toor in chro­mat­ic arrange­ment Shar­ma cre­ates com­plex webs of beau­ti­ful, ethe­re­al, shim­mer­ing sound, mount­ing impro­vi­sa­tion with­in impro­vi­sa­tion with­in the raga form, cli­max­ing in furi­ous blowouts with fiery tabla vir­tu­osos and fren­zied, ecsta­t­ic glis­san­do.

He’s real good. His album Sam­pra­daya is one of my favourite Indi­an clas­si­cal record­ings of all time. And with his debut in 1997 (also on san­toor), Shar­ma’s son and dis­ci­ple Rahul became the third part of an excep­tion­al pan-gen­er­a­tional san­toor tri­umvi­rate. Both Shar­ma’s are play­ing at St Mary of the Angels on Wednes­day the 14th of March — pre­sum­ably on their way to WOMAD — with Yogesh Sam­si on the tabla. They will play in an excit­ing Jugalb­hans­di style. Book­ings from Tick­etek.