Strings for Peace: Maestro Amjad Ali Khan’s Seven Notes
Lately, the world seems to be coming apart at the seams, but for classical Indian sarod player Maestro Amjad Ali Khan, the distance between peoples can be measured in musical notes - and it’s more of a pond than a gulf.
Khan will perform his sarod at Jack Singer Hall on March 22 with GRAMMY-winner Sharon Isbin as well as his sons Aya Ali Bangash and Amaan Ali Bangash.
The evening is billed as a fusion of different cultural approaches to stringed instruments in the lute family, the guitar and the Indian sarod. Sharon Isbin founded the classical guitar department at the Juilliard School in New York while Khan is globally known for playing the sarod, a stringed instrument used to create Hindustani music. To a certain degree, that’s exactly what it is, a fusion of beautiful guitar-playing representing two different corners of the musical planet.
Khan sees the mash-up as two threads from a sweater of beautiful, mutually inclusive sound.
“Any music in the world is based on seven notes,” he says, one Tuesday in early December, when he is performing near Mumbai and I am speaking to him on Zoom from the basement of my home in Calgary.
What distinguishes musical melody, Khan explains, from the sweet talk of politicians and tech billionaires and other assorted global influencers, is that music is honest in ways that words can never be.
“(In music), we deal with pure sound,” Khan says. “True sound cannot be manipulated. If I am out of tune, you will come to know.”
“True language can be manipulated,” he adds.
FAMILY OF SOUND
Khan was born into a family of musicians and grew up in a musical household and is bringing two of them – his sons – to Calgary to perform alongside himself and Isbin. And while all four are instrumentalists, Khan doesn’t see the absence of lyrics as much of an absence at all.
“Guitar and sound belong to the same family,” he says. “I am singing through the instrument. (It) conveys my feelings.”
His relationship with Isbin goes back many years, generated by a mutual passion for guitar music.
Isbin founded the guitar department at Julliard. She won a 2018 GRAMMY for Producer of the Year, Classical for her work with mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard. She also won in 2001 for Best Instrumental Soloist, for her album Dreams of a World, another Grammy in 2002 and another in 2010.
Her career has been marked by fusing different musical sensibilities with her own, whether it’s with Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos, Mexican composer Manuel Ponce, becoming the first solo guitarist to perform with the New York Philharmonic or else performing with singer Josh Groban in a 2015 tribute to Billy Joel or going to the White House to play guitar for President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle in 2010.
“I am excited to collaborate with Sharon,” he says. “She is a fantastic classical guitar player. And a very compassionate person.”
“I am playing a lot of concerts with Sharon (in 2023),” he says. “And composing with her. I love the sound of her guitar. It’s very appealing. We have many concerts in spring, in March and April where she’s playing with me.”
ORCHESTRAL MANEUVERS IN THE DARK
It turns out that while only seven notes may separate humanity, that the musical tradition of northern India, where Khan is from, tends to be solo work - which can get lonely and limiting. Khan craves the sort of collaboration of sounds he sees and hears from the ultimate musical collectives - symphony orchestras - around the world.
“I have great regard for western classical music for legendary composers,” he says. “Bach. Mozart. Many other composers.”
One of Khan’s favourite recent projects was with the Singapore National Orchestra, for whom he created a symphony called The Magen.
“I like to produce orchestral music. It’s very different,” he says. “In India, most music is solo [and so] it’s wonderful to see how 150 musicians produce beautiful music together.
“I would love,” he adds, “to collaborate with the symphony orchestra of Calgary.”
While the string part of the show’s title is second nature for Khan, what’s more challenging – and disheartening – is that peace feels increasingly fraught around a world that’s richer, and more technologically interconnected, than ever.
“Education cannot create compassion and kindness in a human being,” he says. “I thought in the 21st century, with education the world would be peaceful and harmonious, but nothing can make us kind and compassionate.
“In spite of our history – World War I and World War II – we are still not committed to harmony.”
“I am very sad that in the 21st century, we are still fighting and killing,” he says. “Russia and Ukraine. I am praying to God that we stop.”
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