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Considered a "National Living Treasure" in India, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan is one of today's most accomplished Indian classical musicians. His depth of musicianship and mastery of sarode has earned him respect and admiration worldwide. In 1991, he received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship acknowledging his contribution to music. In addition to many awards, he has also received India's highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan.
Born in 1922 in East Bengal (Bangladesh), Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was trained in music by his father, the late Ustad Baba Allauddin Khansahib, who is acknowledged as the greatest musician of North India in this century. His musical ancestral tradition goes back to Mian Tansen of the 16th century Mughal court of Akbar.
Ustad Ali Akbar Khan began his musical training at the age of three. His father, whose depth of musical experience included training in Hindustani and classical Western music, taught his young son to play on a variety of Indian and Western instruments. In time, Ali Akbar Khan began to synthesize the tonal and stylistic qualities of these instruments into his instrument of choice: the sarode. This began an austere and rigorous musical training period of over eighteen years in which the sarode became all instruments in one.
In his early twenties, he became the chief musician in the court of the Maharaja of Jodhpur. In 1955, at the behest of the Asia Society and Yehudi Menuhin, Khansahib performed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At that time, he made the first Western LP recording and the first U.S. television performance of Indian classical music on Allistair Cooke's "Omnibus." Since then he has toured extensively in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, Canada and the U.S.
Today, Ali Akbar Khan is considered by many to be one of the greatest living instrumentalists.
Ali Akbar Khansahib first founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta, India, in 1956. In 1965, he began teaching in America, and in 1968 he founded Ali Akbar College of Music in California.
At the College, Khansahib personally teaches instrumental as well as vocal classes at all levels, and the instruments taught include western classical instruments such as cello, violin, guitar, harp and double bass as well as all the instruments of North India such as the sitar, sarode, sarangi, chandra-sarang and esraj.
