Imrat Khan - Solo Career and Legacy

Solo Career and Legacy

For decades, Imrat has recorded extensively on both his instruments. His full performance practice starts with a surbahar alap in dhrupad ang (embellished with more romantic touches), followed by a shorter alap on the sitar leading into gat in traditional Imdadkhani style. (Sitar players such as Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee added bass strings to their sitars to achieve at least some of the surbahar's lower range on a single instrument).

He has toured in Europe, the Americas, and East and Southeast Asia. Surbahar players are rare today, and Imrat is the main living exponent.

Imrat has five sons, Nishat, Irshad, Wajahat and Shafaatullah,and Azmat Khan, now only eight; the first four sons are all classical musicians: Nishat plays the sitar, Wajahat concentrates on the sarod and Shafaatullah is accomplished on sitar, tabla, and surbahar. The surbahar tradition is largely upheld by Irshad (also a sitar player), who has made some very traditional solo recordings.

Imrat Khan currently spends a portion of each year teaching classical Indian music and instructing sitar students at Washington University in Saint Louis. In addition to his sons, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and George Harrison of The Beatles (who also studied under Ravi Shankar) have been some of his famous students.