Late Pandit Shivkumar Sharma’s music to be performed at a concert in Mumbai

The late Pandit Shivkumar Sharma. File pic

A year can pass in the blink of an eye. For Rahul Sharma though it has been a difficult one. "We do miss him," he admits during a conversation about his father, late Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, who passed away on this day in 2022. Yet, in some ways, it is the music that keeps the family going. The music will indeed be the centrepiece as he takes the stage at the Nehru Centre today to pay tribute to his late father.

"My earliest music ideologies were formed through him. The fact that he is no more is true, but each time I sit to practice or perform, I can feel him with me," the musician says. This makes the title of the concert this evening, Shivji: The Journey Continues, feel all the more appropriate.

The timing and the occasion makes the concert a rare glimpse into the musical heritage that accompanies Sharma. No wonder then that the tickets are selling out fast, with only phone reservations left. The concert will see Ustad Shujaat Khan and Sharma individually pay tribute to the maestro. "I have chosen some older compositions by my father. They were created during the 1970s and '80s, and there are very few records of them left," Sharma reveals.

Rahul Sharma at an earlier performance

Titled gats (compositions), these pieces are set to specific ragas in cycles of seven beats or 16 beats. "They will be performed in ragas such as kirwani, charukesi or rasikapriya. He [my father] had adapted many Carnatic ragas since they sounded better with the santoor."

For Ustad Shujaat Khan, the concert is about more than just a recollection of the maestro's musical legacy. "I look at his life from the perspectives of musicality - unparalleled and beyond us in some ways - and his humanity. He has left footprints in the musical sand for us to follow," the sitarist poetically summarises. Recalling a conversation in Dhaka with the late Panditji, Khan remarks, "I remember specifically spending a couple of hours talking with him about the feeling of ragas. Everything comes down to how the musician and what the occasion makes them feel."

In that traditional Indian music can be quite similar to jazz. Sharma agrees saying, "In classical music, notes are mostly improvised within the periphery of the raga. It is more similar to jazz in that sense because it is being improvised on the spot." Khan though notes that it is the honour of paying tribute that makes the occasion more warranted. Sharma adds that he also plans to exhibit his own style of the santoor in the second half of the evening. "But we will place emphasis on his compositions since it is a tribute," he notes.

Ustad Shujaat Khan

It is hard to not mention the word legacy in a conversation with Sharma. With his own son, nine-year-old Abhinav, already learning the santoor, Sharma says it will continue, but it extends to more than music. "The creativity that went into the evolution of the santoor is unfathomable. My father was synonymous with the instrument." The tradition continues through Sharma's own sense of musical innovation. Having collaborated with the likes of Kenny G, Richard Clayderman and John McLaughlin, Sharma recorded an orchestral piece with the Cape Town Philharmonic with the santoor leading a 50-member orchestra last year.

"It is one of our joys that my father was able to witness the session. After the session, he told me how he had never imagined that the santoor would be the centrepiece of such a composition," Sharma recalls. Titled The Symphony of Santoor with the Cape Town Philharmonic, the album is set to come out later this year. As for the future, the santoor player says, "I am a composer at heart, and always at work. That journey will continue, and so will the journey of the listeners who will join us to celebrate the evening."

On: May 10; 6.30 pm onwards
At: Nehru Centre, Dr Annie Besant Road, Worli.
Call: 9223231359