I'll post all the interesting news about the maestro under this topic.
Here is the first one.
http://www.tonight.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3854166&fSectionId=365&fSetId=251Master musician in Mother CityMay 28, 2007
By Jane Mayne
The doyen of the santoor, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, will travel to South Africa for a three-city concert tour.
Titled Raga on 200 Strings, Sharma's Cape Town showcase will be at the Baxter Concert Hall on Friday, June 15.
Lovers of Indian classical music are in for a treat with this extraordinary display, as the santoor, a folk instrument from the Himalayas's Kashmir valley, owes its classical status to Shivkumar Sharma.
In the early decades of the 20th century, santoor or shata-tantri veena (100 strings) as it was called in ancient times, was used as an accompaniment to a specific type of singing called Sufiana Mausiqi.
After researching the instrument, Sharma made modifications to the 100-stringed instrument, making a new chromatic arrangement of notes and increasing the range to cover a full three octaves.
He also created a new technique of playing with which he could sustain the notes and maintain sound continuity.
With a performance career spanning half a century, he has accumulated many ardent fans of Indian classical music. His live performances are touted as being a brilliant combination of knowledge, skill and spontaneous creativity.
Speaking from his home in Mumbai after a global tour, which included the WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival in New Zealand, Shivkumar says: "My personal concept of Indian classical music is that it is rooted in spirituality. Whenever I play, whether alone, or in a concert, the music takes me inwards, deep into meditative concentration.
"I am truly excited to share my music with South Africa, a country which is steeped in the ethos of reconciliation."
His recorded works include albums such as Call Of The Valley, Feelings, and Music Of The Mountains. Over a 40-year period santoor has become an indispensable part of Indian film music, heard in compositions for the movie director Yash Chopra's blockbusters Silsila, Lamhe, Chandni, and Darr.
Shivkumar Sharma will bring with him some brilliant musicians from India.
He will be accompanied on santoor by his son Rahul, who collaborated with pianist Richard Clayderman on The Confluence.
Rahul is the youngest Indian musician to perform at a WOMAD festival, and the first to release a thematic album on Peter Gabriel's Real Music label.
Accompanying them on tabla will be Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. After years of backbreaking practice, Chatterjee is an invaluable asset to Indian music.
Also part of the tour is Pandit Bhawani Shankar, a popular pakhawaj player. The pakhawaj is a horizontal, barrel-shaped, double-headed drum.
A small head on the right side of the drum is treated with a tar paste to keep it taut and high in pitch.
The drum's left side is treated with atta, a mixture of whole-wheat flour and water, freshly put on to the skin before a performance.
The paste helps to create the distinctive warm bass tone, unique to the instrument.
Bhawani Shankar is credited with exposing pakhawaj to the world stage. His mesmerising performances with Shakti and Remember Shakti, alongside Ustad Zakir Hussain and John McLaughlin, have made him one of the most sought after percussionists in the world.
Raga on 200 Strings will feature a pre-concert talk on Indian classical music by UK-based musicologist and BBC presenter Jameela Siddiqi.
Siddiqi has written extensively on Indian classical music for publications such as the Penguin Rough Guide, and also has a chapter on the commonalties of devotional music traditions among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in The Intimate Other.
She also won a Sony Gold Award for her BBC Radio 3 series, Songs of the Sufi Mystics (1997), becoming the last Western journalist to have done an in-depth interview with the late qawwali maestro, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
