Sharon Isbin, Amjad Ali Khan, Amaan Ali Bangash & Ayaan Ali Bangash - Live in Aspen (2024)

The Aspen Music Festival, one of North America's largest and most beloved summer classical festivals, celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2024. My cherished collaborators, India's great sarod master Amjad Ali Khan, his brilliant sons Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash, tabla virtuoso Amit Kavthekar and I are honored to share in this historic milestone with LIVE IN ASPEN, our sold-out concert performed at the festival in August 2022. The program was inspired by our album STRINGS FOR PEACE recorded in 2019 following a tour in India and released by ZOHO in 2020. We have been performing together ever since!

We had not thought of making another album in summer 2022. We simply wanted to play our hearts out for the exuberant Aspen audience eager to hear a sarod (actually three!) for the first time, and celebrate my 30th consecutive summer performance at the festival where I also direct the guitar department. When we listened to engineer Wes Lanich's masterful recording, however, we were moved by the energy, excitement, joy, spontaneity and love generated that night - to which Ayaan exclaimed, 'this is an album!' With the festival's blessing, engineer Sai Shravanam mixed and mastered LIVE IN ASPEN in India, presenting us with this treasure.

To open the program, I perform a solo by celebrated 19th-century Spanish guitarist Francisco Tárrega, his lilting serenade Capricho árabe rich in Moorish influences. Spanish composers often found inspiration in the tradition of flamenco, an art form believed to have evolved in Andalucía with influences from the Romani who migrated from India hundreds of years ago. Indeed, one can hear elements of Indian classical music in flamenco's melismatic cante jondo (deep song), as well as in rhythms and gestures by composers like Tárrega, Albeniz, Granados and Falla.

In Sacred Evening, Ayaan Ali Bangash joins me in the first of three works composed by Amjad Ali Khan for guitar, sarod and tabla and arranged by Kyle Paul. - Sharon Isbin