Shivkumar Sharma

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Shivkumar Sharma (born January 13, 1938) is an Indian classical musician, working in the Hindustani classical music tradition. He is a master of the santoor, a folk instrument from the valley of Kashmir. It is a type of hammered dulcimer whose strings are struck with a pair of light carved wooden mallets. Before him the santoor was regarded as only an accompanying instrument.

He is credited with single-handedly making the santoor a popular classical instrument, to the extent that the santoor and Pandit Shivkumar Sharma are synonymous. Sharma modified the Kashmiri folk instrument to make it more suitable for his classical technique, increasing the range of the instrument to three full octaves and making it capable of a smoother meend (the glissando or gliding between notes required in Hindustani classical music to emulate the human voice). Besides, he also created a new technique of playing with which he could sustain notes and maintain sound continuity.

Sharma has performed many concerts with renowned musicians such as the tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain. He has also partnered with well-known flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia to form a group called Shiv-Hari for composing Hindi film music.

Shivkumar Sharma is the recipient of many national and international awards including honorary citizenship of the city of Baltimore, USA (1985), Sangeet Natak Academy Award (1986)
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  • Akayz7

    very soothing stuff.

    February 2012

  • Planeta_Lassu

    OM ATHMA OM ♪♪♪

    December 2011

  • adityarj

    very soft music..............good!

    November 2011

  • koyukon

    lovely peaceful music ... thank you

    February 2011

  • rameshhp

    Smekermann: Take a look at the pattern of what I have been listening and you will realize if I am just a Sharma fan or more. You can't fault me for worshipping Sharma - his music is life-giving. At the same time, I also admire the music of other great ones like Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Bhimsen Joshi, Jasraj etc. Santoor is surely addictive. Again, I don't agree that the Elements series is cheesy - it is just an experiment outside the pure classical arena. Even there, many of the tracks are based on ragas.

    July 2010

  • Smekermann

    and rameshhhppp, srsly bra, you gotta stop with the sharma worship. you sound like his PR agent or something.

    July 2010

  • Smekermann

    the thing is that there's a huge difference between listening to shitty new age albums with indian instruments and listening to proper IC music. IC is pretty much all improvised and the interplay between the instruments (well, the main instrument and the percussion accompaniment, generally) is pretty amazing, especially when dealing with masters of their craft (ie. sharma, zakir hussain). Elements and other albums of its ilk, on the other hand, have absolutely none of the depth and are basically dumbed-down albums to appeal to yoga housewives and dumb stoners who think it's cool to hear some sitar twanging while they get high.

    July 2010

  • quora

    yep, agreed about "elements" - too much cheesy arrangements (keyboards and similar new age stuff) which change the music very much but, otherwise, this album is easy listenable for many, so, it may attract some people to his pure santoor music

    July 2009
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