Alam Khan on Primetime

Alam Khan

On Thursday December 8, 2011 at 12pm/PST our guest will be musician Alam Khan. Join us as we get to know Alam, his rich heritage, and all of the wonderful things he’s doing in introducing a very traditional form of music into the repertoire of musicians of a variety of genres. Tune in at Swoopsworld.com.

Son of the legendary Sarode Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, Alam Khan has been touching the hearts of audiences worldwide for the past 15 years. Since his initial training into the Maihar Seni Gharana at the age of seven, Alam was blessed to learn and live in the traditional style of Guru and student. Ali Akbar Khan’s careful crafting and guidance shows in each note as well as in Alam’s imaginative way of expressing the ancient ragas passed down from the courts of Emperor Akbar by Mian Tansen in the 16th century.

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Alam’s performance career was introduced to the world when he began accompanying his father onstage, internationally, from 1996 to 2006. They played in such prestigious venues as the Royal Jodhpur Palace, the Dover Lane Music Festival in Calcutta, and New York’s Lincoln Center Jazz festival, as well as highly acclaimed concerts all over the United States, Canada, Europe and India.

Along with accompanying his esteemed father, Alam’s inner voice began to emerge and grow with his solo career, which began in 1998. He has toured worldwide and established himself as Ali Akbar Khan’s true heir and the face of a new generation of Sarode players, attracting praise and attention from musical icons such as Sitar Legend Ravi Shankar, Carlos Santana, Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Slide Guitarist Derek Trucks, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Pandit Buddhadev Dasgupta, and many more of India’s finest musicians. Alam has had the privilege and honor of performing alongside some of India’s greatest Tabla masters–such as Swapan Chaudhuri, Zakir Hussain and Anindo Chatterjee–in a constantly growing list of highly reputed venues, including the Dover Lane Music Festival, Saptak, Zakir Hussain’s annual Barsi concert (in honor of Ustad Allarakha), the Darbar Festival, the San Francisco World Music Festival, the Chicago World Music Festival and the Carnegie Group in NYC.

Alam has also collaborated and performed with a wide array of artists from different genres such as Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Bob Weir, Rob Wasserman, Christopher Hedge, Homayoun Sakhi, underground Hip-Hop legend Eligh and electronic musicians Amplive and Janaka Selekta.

Alam was recently in the film “Play Like a Lion” that tells the amazing story of his musical journey as well as his father’s. It is now circulating amongst 2011-2012 film festival circuits internationally.

Alam was the personal assistant to his father during his final years of life, helping aid him in teaching at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California–a mecca for students and lovers of Indian classical music. Alam Khan, following his father’s wishes, is now the teacher of advanced instrumental and vocal classes at the Ali Akbar College of Music and has dedicated his life to preserving, performing and teaching this music to the world.