Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India
| Tour by Ravi Shankar | |
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| Start date | 23 September 1974 |
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| End date | mid October 1974 |
| Ravi Shankar concert chronology | |
| Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India | ||||
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| Studio album by Ravi Shankar (on Dark Horse Records) | ||||
| Released | 6 February 1976 | |||
| Recorded | August−September 1974 | |||
| Studio | FPSHOT, Oxfordshire | |||
| Genre | Indian classical, Hindustani classical | |||
| Length | 47:23 | |||
| Label | Dark Horse | |||
| Producer | George Harrison | |||
| Ravi Shankar (on Dark Horse Records) chronology | ||||
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Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India was an Indian classical music revue led by sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar intended for Western concert audiences and performed in 1974. Its presentation was the first project undertaken by the Material World Charitable Foundation, set up the previous year by ex-Beatle George Harrison. Long a champion of Indian music, Harrison also produced an eponymous studio album by the Music Festival orchestra, which was released in 1976 on his Dark Horse record label. Both the CD format of the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India album and a DVD of their performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London were issued for the first time on the 2010 Shankar–Harrison box set Collaborations.
The sixteen members of Shankar's Music Festival from India included Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shivkumar Sharma, Alla Rakha, T.V. Gopalkrishnan, L. Subramaniam, Sultan Khan and Lakshmi Shankar. Several of the musicians began successful international careers as a result of their participation, and all are recognised as being among the late twentieth century's finest exponents of Indian classical music. The ensemble played in Europe in September and October 1974 before touring North America with Harrison and his band during the final two months of the year.
Although he had composed and performed orchestral works in India, as All India Radio's music director between 1949 and 1956,Ravi Shankar's only similar project for Western audiences had been when he toured America with his Festival from India orchestra in 1968. The tour featured musicians such as Shivkumar Sharma, Jitendra Abhisheki and Palghat Raghu, with Shankar's regular jugalbandi partner, sarodya Ali Akbar Khan, joining the ensemble for their concerts in California. The plan for the larger Music Festival from India took shape in January 1974, when his friend George Harrison visited Shankar in his home town of Benares. Harrison attended a religious ceremony in honour of Shankar's new home, Hemangana, beside the River Ganges at Benares, after which he suggested that Shankar assemble an orchestra for concert tours of Europe and the United States. According to Harrison, the Music Festival was something that he himself had been wanting to stage "since about '67". He was particularly inspired after hearing Shankar's orchestral piece Nava Rasa Ranga while in Bombay, where Harrison had recorded part of his 1968 solo album Wonderwall Music.
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