Ustad Ali Akbar Khan

I just found out that one of the world's truly great musicians Ustad Ali Akbar Khan died in June. He was 87. Back in the late 80s I saw Ustad Ali Akbar Khan play at Stanford. His music was transcendent, subtle, and life renewing. It mattered little whether or not I knew anything about Indian classical music. Hearing him made me understand the heights that musicians and all humans could aspire to, if we only had ears to hear.

"If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself, after 20 years you may become a performer and please the audience, after 30 years you may please even your guru, but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist—then you may please even God." --Ustad Ali Akbar Khan

"Guitarist Carlos Santana once said that a single note of Khan’s sarod 'goes right to my heart,' while classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin - who prompted Mr. Khan to first visit the United States in 1955 - once called the sarodist 'the greatest musician in the world.'"(Sepia Munity: "Farewell to Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.")

"Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, who took drum lessons at Mr. Khan’s college the first year it opened, said …, 'All the people who studied there - it changed all our lives. Khan embodies the pure spirit of music; it’s not just the notes, it’s the spirit. Every time I listen to him, he takes me there.'" (Sepia Munity: "Farewell to Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.")

"Ustad Ali Akbar Khan embodied the very pinnacle of our great classical music tradition. In his hands, the sarod was an instrument that expressed with unsurpassed beauty and eloquence the noblest aspirations and deepest yearnings of the human soul." -- World Music Central