This was an opportunity to hear two genres of Indian music in one concert. I don’t think that we’d seen Amjad Ali Khan before this concert – although I had heard my father’s recordings of him playing with Ravi Shankar.
This concert was part of his residency at the Wigmore Hall, which I think was a new idea back then.
The first half of the concert was singing in the Carnatic (Southern Indian) tradition. This was interesting but not as relaxing and delightful to our ears as the sarod music performed by Amjad Ali Khan himself in the second half.
For some reason the Wigmore Hall on-line stub for this concert is incomplete and has errors in it (at the time of writing – February 20180 – here is the link anyway.
So I have uploaded the information sheet, which I am sure is accurate:
Robin Denselow in the Guardian gave the concert a top notch review – click here.
Below is a video of the Carnatic vocal music:
Below is Amjad Ali Khan performing with the same pakhawaj player we saw, Fateh Singh Gangani, albeit a few years later:
We loved the second half of the concert and resolved to see more of this stuff in the future…
…which we did – not least a “family Ali Khan” concert a couple of years later – click here or below:
Sarod Legacy: The 7th Generation, Wigmore Hall, 25 July 2014