This Day in UMS: Ravi Shankar
Editor’s Note: “This day in UMS History” is an occasional series of vignettes drawn from UMS’s historical archive. If you have a personal story or particular memory from attending the performance featured here, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.
December 11: Anniversary of Ravi Shankar’s Death
Legendary virtuoso sitarist, composer, teacher, and writer, Ravi Shankar was India’s most esteemed musical Ambassador and a singular phenomenon in the classical music worlds of both East and West. A prolific composer, he composed numerous traditional ragas and talas, as well as many works involving western collaborations, including two concertos for sitar and orchestra for violinist Yehudi Mehunin and collaboration with Philip Glass, including the multi-artist work Orion, which opened the 2004 Cultural Olympiad in Greece. The New York Times called him the “Sitarist who introduced Indian Music to the West.”
UMS first had the honor of presenting Ravi Shankar in April 1996 in Rackham Auditorium. The program pictured above is from a solo performance in Hill Auditorium in September 2004.
