News!
Check out Ken’s new video on youtube!
Ken Zuckerman & Swapan Chaudhuri - Raga Jogiya Kalingra
Read the review of the 3 Shades of Raga South Africa Tour in Songlines Magazine. You should have been there.... (more…)
News
Upcoming & Recent Concerts
2010 * * * 2010
December 23, 2009 - January 11, 2010, India Tour
January 1, 2010 - Bhopal, India
January 15, 2010, Mumbai, India - Ken receives an award from the Music Forum for his contribution to the cause of Indian Music.
January 16, 2010, Krakow, Poland, with Dominique Vellard, Keyvan Chemirani & Prabhu Edouard
February 10 - 14, 2010 - South Africa 
Three Shades of Raga, with Pandit Jasraj, Kala Ramnath, Anindo Chatterjee & Vijay Ghate
March 31, 2010, Krakow, Poland, The Route to the Orient, with Hesperion XXI
April 14, 2010, Basel, Switzerland - Salon de Musique, in celebration of the late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s birthday
June 12, 2010, Basel, Switzerland - Two Worlds of Modal Music
July 31, 2010, San Rafael, California - Ali Akbar College Summer Series
August 27, 2010, Zurich, Switzerland - Röntgenplatzfest 2010
October 2, 2010, Cologne, Germany - Two Worlds of Modal Music
October 12, 2010, Oviedo, Spain - The Route to the Orient, with Hesperion XXI
October 24, 2010, Bern, Switzerland - “Zoom In” Festival
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2009 * * * 2009
January - March, 2009, Dartmouth College, Hanover New Hampshire, Visiting Professor in residence
February 17, 2009, Dartmouth College, 8 PM, with Samir Chatterjee
March 27, 2009, Cambridge, England, with Dominique Vellard and Sanju Sahai
March 28, 2009, Chelmsford, Essex, England, with Dominique Vellard and Sanju Sahai
May 8, 2009, Basel, Switzerland, Schweizer-Indische Gesellschaft
June 5, 2009, Jerusalem, Israel, with Sanju Sahai and Yair Dalal
September 8, 2009, Zurich, Switzerland, with the Zurich Kammerorchester
September 25, 2009, Zurich, Switzerland, with Hanna Järveläinen (soprano), and Sanju Sahai (Tabla)
October 5-6, 2009, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, concert & workshop
November 13, 2009, Basel, Switzerland, with Swapan Chaudhuri - Memorial concert for Ustad Ali Akbar Khan
November 29, 2009, Paris, France, with Hesperion XXI
December 23, 2009 - January 11, 2010, India Tour
Maestro Ali Akbar Khan passed away on June 18, 2009
It is with great sadness that I inform you that my mentor, guru and second father, Ali Akbar Khansahib, passed away peacefully on the evening of June 18, 2009, surrounded by his family and close disciples. He was 87 years old and had been suffering from kidney disease for several years.
Khansahib’s long life and career spanned epochs and continents. He was one of the last “court musicians” of the old India and was the first Indian musician to record in the West. Yehudi Menuhin, who invited him to perform and record in the USA in 1955, called him “an absolute genius…. perhaps the greatest musician in the world.”
Ali Akbar Khan was the only son of Allauddin Khan, a legendary musician who revolutionized Indian instrumental music and trained some of India’s most renowned musicians, including his son and Ravi Shankar. His training was extremely rigorous, and he sometimes had to practice up to 18 hours a day. His concert debut at the All India Music Conference in Allahabad in 1939 opened a new chapter in Indian instrumental music by redefining the way the sarod is played. He was recognized both as a consummate classicist and innovator on the sarod, a 25-stringed skin faced lute. He will be remembered as the single most influential master of this instrument.
He received all of India’s highest music awards and was considered a “national treasure”. In the USA he was honored with the MacArthur “genius award” and the National Heritage Fellowship, which was presented to him by Hillary Clinton at the White House in 1997.
Khansahib opened the first Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta in 1956. Then with the great wave of interest for Indian music in the West, he opened his school in San Rafael, California in 1967, where he taught for the next 42 years. He trained thousands of students from the West and India at this institute.
Basel, Switzerland, was fortunate to have benefitted from Maestro Khan’s yearly visits for more than 20 years. In 1985 he opened the Ali Akbar College of Music – Switzerland, which I had the honor to direct, and he conducted annual seminars which attracted students from all over Europe. Although ill health prevented him from coming to Basel during the last 4 years, the College continues to promote his work with ongoing classes and yearly seminars.
In 2005, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Ali Akbar College in Basel, he wrote, “Many years ago my father gave me the mission to spread this music “as far as the sun and moon shine.” This has been my life-long work and I don’t want it to die. It is of great importance that my closest students and disciples, like Ken, continue this work in the future. Therefore I ask you all to give him your good wishes and support to continue this mission so that the great tradition of Indian classical music can be passed on to future generations. I would also like to thank the city of Basel and the Music Academy of Basel for all its help and support during the past 20 years. I have always felt very welcome in Basel and have many fond memories of my visits here.”
Here are several announcements / remembrances, etc.
Announcement from the Indian press
