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.