Shivkumar Sharma
Shivkumar Sharma was one of the truly great visionaries in the Hindustani classical music firmament. His popularity created a knotty problem for his admirers. His success led to a demand for recordings by him, to a degree that having a Shivkumar Sharma album acted like a kind of validation for a label. Consequently the market was flooded with his recordings. His playing was consummate, and he rarely recorded a piece of work that is below par, which makes selecting a shortlist even more difficult.
Sharma's story was one of dedication. He was born in January 1938 in Jammu Kashmir. His father Uma Dutt Sharma asked him to pursue the development of the Kashmiri santoor. Being a dutiful son he obeyed and persevered despite private reservations. Though its Persian relative, the santur, had associations with Persian and Iranian classical music, elevating the Indian instrument to the classical concert platform was widely viewed as folly in conservative quarters. But Shivkumar Sharma persisted, experimented, restrung and reconfigured his instrument. His first major santoor recital took place in Bombay in February 1955, but it took, he reckons, until the 1970s to finally silence the querulous, "the die-hard connoisseurs of the music, musicologists and purists." Parallel with his development of the santoor he worked as a tabla player (he accompanied acts as diverse as the renowned Punjabi folksinger Surinder Kaur and sitar maestro Ravi Shankar), and his understanding of tabla playing and rhythm immeasurably enhanced his performance style and stagecraft. Shivkumar Sharma died in a hospital in Mumbai on May 10, 2022 from a cardiac arrest; he was 84 years old.
© Ken Hunt /TiVo
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Discography
7 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Raga Jog
Indian Music - Released by Naïve Jazz - world on 1 Jan 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Shivkumar Sharma & Zakir Hussian: Classical Indian Music
World - Released by Network on 1 Jan 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Yugal Bundi
Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shivkumar Sharma, Kashinath Mishra
World - Released by Delos on 1 Jan 1974
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rare Masterpiece - Raga Bhinna Kauns
World - Released by FreeSpirit Music on 26 Feb 2021
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mountain Breeze
World - Released by Audiorec Classics on 1 Aug 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Golden Heritage
World - Released by Navras Records on 9 Feb 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
When Time Stood Still! (Live)
Folk - Released by OSMOSIS RECORDS on 20 Oct 1982
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo