Darbari Unleashed | Ustad Nishat Khan | Music of India

Indian classical music at its best...Ustad Nishat Khan plays

Raag Darbari Kanada at Darbar Festival 2017

Nishat Khan is an Indian sitar player, composer and son of surbahar player Imrat Khan.

Khan was born in the mid-1960s in Kolkata. As the son and disciple of Imrat Khan, he is the torchbearer of seven generations and the 400-year-old tradition of India’s most renowned musical family. Khan has mastered not only the North Indian classical idiom but also realms as diverse as Gregorian chant, Western classical music, abstract jazz, and Flamenco. His remarkable intuition for other musical traditions has led to collaborations with leading performers and composers such as John McLaughlin, Philip Glass, Paco Pena, Evelyn Glennie, and Django Bates.

Khan has performed at major venues internationally, including Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center in New York, and the Royal Albert Hall in London. In 2004, he was invited to perform alongside Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, John McLaughlin and others at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas. In 2007, he toured across India with violinist Vanessa Mae and in 2008 toured Europe with his pioneering Spirit & Passion featuring Flamenco guitar great Paco Pena, and later that year performed a solo concert at the BBC Proms.

In 2011, he composed his first Bollywood film score, "Yeh Saali Zindagi", for the acclaimed director Sudhir Mishra and in 2013, the Indian Government commissioned him to write a 70-minute orchestral score for the Indian classic silent film, 'A Throw of Dice'. The work was commissioned especially for performance at the Centenary Film Festival, which celebrates 100 years of Indian cinema. Later in 2013 he premiered his The Gate of the Moon (Sitar Concerto No 1) at the BBC Proms with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and David Atherton.

Khan is based in Beverly Hills, California, and works as a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ustad Nishat Khan sitar

Shahbaz Hussain tabla

Emmanuel Masongsong tanpura 

Filmed on location at Darbar Festival 2017 at Sadler's Wells, London, UK

The Darbar Festival was born as a tribute to celebrate the life and memory of Bhai Gurmit Singh Ji Virdee, an inspirational tabla player who taught thousands of children in the UK over a 30 year period. The Darbar Festival has since grown into an annual festival at the UK's most prestigious venues, bringing together the finest Hindustani, Carnatic, dhrupad and percussion from Indian classical genres, as well as dance. 

Darbar Arts Culture Heritage Trust is a registered charity in the UK, established to champion Indian classical arts through high quality live events, digital work and education. Our YouTube channel aims to bring you excerpts from our digital archives from live events, informative videos about Indian classical music as well as insights from artists themselves. Many of you have asked us to upload full concerts. We are committed to doing this but need to raise more funds to cover the costs of producing full length concerts.

For more information about our work see www.darbar.org. Please sign up to our newsletter for live events; subscribe to the Darbar YouTube channel for the latest digital work and please donate what you can so we can continue to ensure that global audiences  can experience one of the finest art forms in the world. 

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