The Basement Rug

Baptism (1968) is probably the most stand-out item in the entire Joan Baez catalog, perhaps even the whole Vanguard catalog. It is certainly the most dark and compelling concept album I have ever heard. I have the original vinyl LP, but it has seen better days. I have been looking for a better copy for years but have never found one. I just found this 128 kbps mp3 rip from a CD re-issue. It’s not as nice as having the CD, but it certainly beats the old LP. If you can find the CD or a decent LP copy, I highly recommend picking this up. This is a sit-down and pay attention album - headphones if you like, but you definitely need to be prepared for a dark and intense journey. A really great gem from Baez and Peter Schickele.

Original music composed and conducted by Peter Schickele
Selected and edited by Joan Baez
Conceived and compiled by Maynard Solomon

Track Listing:

[1] Old Welsh Song (Henry Treece)
[2] I Saw The Vision Of Armies (Walt Whitman)
[3] Minister of War (translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley)
[4] Song In The Blood (Jacques Prévert)
[5] Casida Of The Lament (Federico García Lorca)
[6] Of The Dark Past (Ecce Puer) (James Joyce)
[7] London (William Blake)
[8] In Guernica (Norman Rosten)
[9] Who Murdered The Minutes (Henry Treece)
[10] Oh, Little Child (Henry Treece)
[11] No Man Is An Iland (John Donne)
[12] from Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man (James Joyce)
[13] All The Pretty Little Horses (Negro Lullaby)
[14] Childhood III (Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Louise Varèse)
[15] The Magic Wood (Henry Treece)
[16] Poems From The Japanese (Translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
[17] Colours (Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi)
[18] All In Green Went My Love Riding (e. e. cummings)
[19] Gacela Of The Dark Death (Federico García Lorca, translated by Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili)
[20] The Parable Of The Old Man And The Young (Wilfred Owen)
[21] Evil (Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Norman Cameron)
[22] Epitaph For A Poet (Countee Cullen)
[23] Old Welsh Song (Henry Treece)
[24] Mystic Numbers: 36. Wedding Song (Henry Treece)
[25] When The Shy Star Goes Forth In Heaven (James Joyce)
[26] The Angel (William Blake)

Review by Bruce Eder:

Joan Baez’s most unusual album, Baptism is of a piece with the “concept” albums of the late ’60s, but more ambitious than most and different from all of them. Baez by this time was immersed in various causes, concerning the Vietnam War, the human condition, and the general state of the world, and it seemed as though every note of music that she sang was treated as important — sometimes in a negative way by her opponents; additionally, popular music was changing rapidly, and even rock groups that had seldom worried in their music about too much beyond the singer’s next sexual conquest were getting serious. Baptism was Baez getting more serious than she already was, right down to the settings of her music, and redirecting her talent from folk song to art song, complete with orchestral accompaniment. Naturally, her idea of a concept album would differ from that of, say, Frank Sinatra or the Beatles. Baptism was a body of poetry selected, edited, and read and sung by Baez, and set to music by Peter Schickele (better known for his comical musical “discoveries” associated with “P.D.Q. Bach,” but also a serious musician and composer). In 1968, amid the strife spreading across the world, the album had a built-in urgency that made it work as a mixture of art and message — today, it seems like a precious and overly self-absorbed period piece. Baez lacks the speaking voice to pull off an album’s worth of readings, though her interpretations of Federico García Lorca’s “Casida of the Lament” and “Gacela of the Dark Death” show her achieving a level of compelling expressiveness that is lacking elsewhere; and the recording of Countee Cullen’s “Epitaph for a Poet” features some beautiful accompaniment by Schickele. Additionally, the sung portions, including “Old Welsh Song,” “Who Murdered the Minutes,” “The Magic Wood,” and “Oh, Little Child” by Henry Treece, “Of the Dark Past” by James Joyce, “All in Green Went My Love Riding” by e.e. cummings, and the lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses” are beautiful and sustain those portions of the album. Baptism is primarily for Baez completists, however, although it is also a singular reminder for ’60s history buffs that not all of the antiwar movement’s music, or the work coming out of the folk scene in 1968, was necessarily loud, harsh, or bitter.

Missing fingers? Pianist never gives it a thought

Monday, 14 November 2005
By Kristen Holland
The Dallas Morning News

Mason Flink’s fingers flutter across the keyboard like raindrops on cement, his upper body arching toward the baby grand piano as the melodies of Chopin and Schumann fill the air.

The quick tempos would be challenging to play with 10 fingers, but the 17-year-old Highland Park High senior doesn’t have that option. Born with ulnar dysplasia, a condition also known as ulnar club hand, Mason’s right hand has only three fingers.

The National Merit semifinalist will show off his fast-moving digits during a concert today at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. Proceeds from his senior piano recital will benefit Scottish Rite, which treats patients for free.

Mason said he was destined to play an instrument. His mother, Paige Flink, is a pianist; his father, Randy, plays the trumpet. Several grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins are also musicians.

“It’s a big part of my religion and also a part of my emotional development,” said Mason, who attends University Park United Methodist Church with his family. “I feel that I was given these gifts to use, and I find that I’m able to express myself through music.”

Doctors don’t know why Mason developed ulnar club hand. He was born with a thumb and all his fingers adjoined on his right hand.

“We separated his fingers when he was a year old,” said Dr. Peter Carter, a pediatric orthopedic hand surgeon at Scottish Rite. “When he was about 10 we had to do another operation to relieve scars so he could play the piano better.”

Doctors considered adding two artificial fingers when he was a child but decided he would have better control and range of motion without them.

Mason can’t play five-fingered chords with his right hand, but that’s about his only physical limitation on the piano. For four-fingered chords, he uses his left thumb.

“I don’t think he ever realized he didn’t have five fingers,” said Johnnie Cardinale, his piano teacher of a decade. “We’ve never not chosen something because we felt like he couldn’t handle it.”

Mason said he doesn’t consider his missing fingers a limitation. “I don’t know how it would have been the other way,” he said. “I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

Kelly Christensen, Scottish Rite’s vice president of public relations, said the hospital is tickled about Mason’s benefit concert.

“Nothing is more meaningful to us at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children than a child, especially a former patient, giving back to the hospital,” she said. “We are so proud of Mason’s incredible determination, musical talent and caring spirit.”

The high school senior has made some adaptations off the piano, though not as many as some might expect.

“When he played baseball, they placed finger toys in the glove so he could catch,” Mrs. Flink said while watching her son practice the piano.

He throws baseballs left-handed but he does everything else, including writing, with his right hand.

An award-winning trumpet player, Mason quit the school band last year so he could focus on the Bagpipe, Highland Park’s student newspaper. A former reporter and features editor, Mason has worked his way up to design editor of the monthly publication.

Seated on a cushy sofa before a recent piano lesson, Mason said his musical tastes are a bit random. A scroll through his iPod would uncover concertos by Beethoven and Mozart as well as tunes by Coldplay, the Beatles and Jars of Clay.

Ms. Cardinale said she always knew he would become a great pianist because he does more than just play the notes – he feels the music.

“When we first started doing jazz or even when we were doing concertos, we would spend 15 minutes on three bars not because we were fingering but because Mason wanted to do it right,” she said.

Mason said that his success is only partly because of his work ethic. “I have a lot of support from my parents and my piano teacher,” he said.

Though he’s leaning toward a career in psychology or law, Mason has no plans to give up music.

“As much as music is a way for me to bring joy to other people it’s also a good thing for me do to for myself,” he said. “It’s fun to be able to sit down at a piano and play.”

This is my final Bela Bartok LP transcription and my second from 1965 on the Supraphon label (SUA 10650) out of Czechoslovakia. Andre Gertler on violin and Diane Anderson, piano. I liked the Hungarian Folks Songs so much, I created a special 32kHz/80kbps/mono version for quick download to your mp3 player - or you can listen online in the player below.

Bela Bartok
Sonata for Violin and Piano No.1
I - Allegro appassionato
II - Adagio
III - Allegro

Bela Bartok and Tivadar Orszagh
Hungarian Folk Songs for violin and piano:

Bela Bartok and Andre Gertler
Sonatina for Violin and Piano
on Folks Songs from Transylvania
I - Allegretto
II - Moderato
III - Finale

If you haven’t already, you should check out my post of Bartok’s Violin Concerto No.1. You should be able to fit these two albums together on one CD - a great companion on a long road trip. This particular LP is a real gem from 1965 in near mint condition. Unlike my other Bartok posts, you should hear negligible surface noise and debris in this transcription.

Bela Bartok
Concerto No.2 for Violin and Orchestra
I - Allegro non troppo
II - Andante tranquillo
III - Allegro molto

Andre Gertler - violin
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Karel Ancerl
Recorded in Supraphon Studios in Prague
Musical Supervision: Miloslav Kuba
Sound and cut: ing. Platz
Supraphon SUA 10696 (mono, 1965)
Made in Czechosolovakia

This post is dedicated to Canadian composer Eldon Rathburn, who died in Ottawa on 30 August 2008. Rathburn composed Labyrinthe for a special National Film Board of Canada pavilion at Expo-67.

Liner notes about the Labyrinth:

Outside a 5-storey windowless structure, one of the many architectureal features of Expo ‘67, a long queue of visitors waits patiently, sometimes for hours in the rain, to gain admittance to the Labyrinth.

Why this magnetic appeal?

It is a unique blend of film images, architecture, music and sound effects, and each of these is its own attraction. But more than the dazzle of a complex film presentation, of brilliant stereophonic sound, and a of powerful architecture, is the fascination of the theme, for the emotions generated by the whole experience taken together inevitably lead the visitor to a mysterious search - to a journey into himself.

As in the labyrinths of antiquity, with their winding corridors, dead ends, and menacing minotaur, their puzzling search for the one way out, the visitor is set off through a symbolic maze of life. In theatres unlike any built before, from images, and sounds gathered around the world, emerges the cycle of every man’s life: his entry into the world, his energies and aspirations, his confidence and uncertainty, his sufferings and his sacrafices, the desolation of death and the ever-renewed promise of birth.

The movement of the audience through the physical structure is an integral part of the experience. As one enters, an almost ceremonial procession through the shadowy winding corridors, accompanied by haunting music, prepares the senses and the mind for what is to come. In the breath-taking first theatre the audience gazes from eight balconies onto a long narrow screen far below on the floor and onto a similarly elongated vertical screen on the wall ahead. Here are played out life’s first hopes, and its first great disillusionments.

Next one proceeds to “The Maze”, a complex of twisting aisles, thousands of tiny sparkling coloured lights mirrored into infinity, and electronically prepared music, all forming an interlude which suggests as yet undiscovered resources in one’s inner life.

In the third and last chamber five film screens arranged in the form of a cross confront the visitor. On them an interplay of pictures as different ordinary film as poetry from prose, tells of man’s necessary confrontation with the dark aspects of his own nature, and his consequent release into a world in which, even though he is called on to give up everything, he finally finds the peace and happiness he has spent his life seeking.

From the last quiet image of a sea-scape accompanied by a tranquil face carved into stone, the viewer exits onto a balcony over-looking the broad sweep of the St. Lawrence River, to face the reality of his own particular world again.

Through Eldon Rathburn’s vivid, evocative music, and other elements of the sound track, all superbly recorded and specially prepared for this unique phonogrpahic experience, this record recreates the many moods of the Labyrinth.

The production was hailed by TIME magazine as proof that cinema “has just begun to explore its boundaries and possibilities”. It used 35mm and 70mm film projected simultaneously on five screens in a cross formation and was the precursor of today’s IMAX format. Shortly after Expo-67, co-director Roman Kroitor left the National Film Board of Canada to co-found Multi-Screen Corporation, which later became IMAX Corporation.

The Labyrinth building at Expo-67 consisted of three main chambers: Theatre One, which ran two 70mm projectors in a unique floor-and-end-wall combination; The Maze, an apparently limitless series of mirrors and red “grain-of-wheat” bulbs; and Theatre Three, which projected five simulataneous 35mm projections in a cross formation.

In 1979, the NFB re-issued In the Labyrinth in a single-screen format. In May 2007, the NFB and the Cinémathèque Québécoise presented an exhibition at the Labyrinth pavilion, marking the 40th anniversary of Expo 67.

Descriptions of the Labyrinthe experience from the 7 July 1967 edition of TIME magazine:

In the vaulted chambers of a windowless, five-story building, the viewer follows a restatement of the Greek myth of Theseus, who entered a labyrinth on the island of Crete to slay the monstrous Minotaur. In the pavilion the labyrinth is evoked by a series of eerie corridors and chambers, including one auditorium where audiences peer down from galleries on a swimming pool-sized screen. At the same time, an oblong screen, 38 ft. high, confronts them at eye level. Sometimes Labyrinth uses the two screens to show off: a girl on the far screen throws a bit of bread away; it lands with a splash on the shimmering pond of the bottom screen. Most often it is employed to generate vertigo, as when a trapeze artist dangles above a crowd, or when two men have a highball-to-highball confrontation with a swiveling stripper.

Sonic Boon. Another chamber shows five screens arranged in the shape of a cross. In the most effective sequence, an African hunter peers out at the jungle, spear in hand, searching the waters for a crocodile. Around him the night seethes ominously. When at last he kills his quarry, the screens abruptly fill with white-eyed death masks that seem, for once, as terrifying to the viewer as they must be to the native. Labyrinth’s narration is sometimes painfully portentous: “The hardest place to look is inside yourself, but that is where you will find the beast. . .” But for the most part it is a sonic boon, admirably understating Labyrinth’s stunning visual display.

Sound Engineering:

The Labyrinth required the creation of new equipment and new recording techniques for service both on location throughout the world and for re-recording in the building at Expo.

For location recording, a small, portable, stereo, pilot-tone recorder was developed, using two Nagra recorders arranged in tandem. For re-recording and mixing inside the Labyrinth a specially-designed mixing console was constructed and moved from chamber to chamber as the re-recording progressed. Only in this way could the effect of twenty different tracks feeding 858 speakers arranged in a variety of configurations be gauged. This record was prepared in the studios of the National Film Board, Montreal, using 3M 4-track, 1/2-inch tape players, Ampex 1/4-inch recorders, Altec speakers and the NFB console.

I highly recommend downloading the entire album, but if you would like to sample a taste first, check out my City Faces remix. It consists of a 14-second sample from Out of the Labyrinthe inserted at the beginning of City Faces. You can listen to the remix in the player below:

Track Listing:

1) Birth
2) City Faces
3) Tranquility
4) The Minotaur
5) The Wind in my Hand
6) Confident Youth
7) Into the Labyrinthe
8) Out of the Labyrinthe
9) The Universe spins on the point of my Head
10) Farewell to a Hero
11) Celebration
12) Thresherman’s Reunion

Biography:

Labyrinthe composer Eldon (Davis) Rathburn was born in Queenstown, New Brunswick, Canada on 21 April 1916. After early piano studies with Eric Rollinson in Saint John, NB, where he also played in Don Messer’s band, Eldon Rathburn won a CPRS scholarship for his compositions Silhouette (1936) and To a Wandering Cloud (1938). In 1938-9, he studied composition with Healey Willan, organ with Charles Peaker, and piano with Reginald Godden. For his Symphonette (1943) he received first prize in the Los Angeles Young Artists’ Competition (1944). He was a danceband pianist, church organist, and radio arranger 1939-47 in Saint John before joining the NFB, Ottawa, where he was a staff composer 1947-76. He taught film-music composition 1972-6 at the University of Ottawa. In common with other NFB composers, Rathburn developed a light-textured and economical style readily adaptable to the mood of a film.

By 1976, in addition to many concert works, Eldon Rathburn had composed 185 film scores (mostly shorts for the NFB) including To the Ladies (1947), Family Circle (1949), Children’s Concert (1951), The Romance of Transportation (1952), Who Will Teach Your Child? (1952), City of Gold (1957; the basis for a symphonic suite of the same name), Universe (1960), Drylanders (1963; his first feature-length score), Labyrinth (1967, a multi-screen extravaganza for which a special theatre was built at Expo 67; recorded on Dominion LAB-650S), Pillar of Wisdom (1968), The World of Paul Kane (1973), The Road to Green Gables (1975; for CBC TV), and Who Has Seen the Wind (1977; feature film). The NFB scores (1947-64) are listed in Musique et cinéma. In retirement in Ottawa, Rathburn remained active, composing and doing research on music with a railroad theme. His scores included music for the IMAX films Skyward (1984), Transitions (1986), The First Emperor of China (a China-Canada co-production 1989), and the NFB tribute to Norman McLaren, The Creative Process (1990). His scores are deposited at the National Library of Canada. Eldon Rathburn was a member of the CLComp and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre.

Here’s something just in time for Halloween. If you don’t have a copy of the original 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, you better get out and find one! Check your local TV listings for Halloween - you will probably find it. If you are able to watch the original film, kill the audio and play this instead.

Dracula: Soundtrack by Philip Glass
Catalog Number: NONESUCH 79542
Released: 1999

1) Dracula
2) Journey to the Inn
3) Inn
4) Crypt
5) Carriage Without a Driver
6) Castle
7) Drawing Room
8) ‘Excellent, Mr) Renfield’
9) Three Consorts of Dracula
10) Storm
11) Horrible Tragedy
12) London Fog
13) In the Theatre
14) Lucy’s Bitten
15) Seward Sanatorium
16) Renfield
17) In His Cell
18) When the Dream Comes
19) Dracula Enters
20) Or a Wolf
21) Women in White
22) Renfield in the Drawing Room
23) Dr) Van Helsing and Dracula
24) Mina on the Terrace
25) Mina’s Bedroom/The Abbey
26) End of Dracula

The following biography was taken from kronosquartet.org:

KRONOS QUARTET:

David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello

For more than 30 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington, John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola) and Jeffrey Zeigler (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 40 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world’s most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning hundreds of works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos’ work has also garnered numerous awards, including a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and “Musicians of the Year” (2003) from Musical America.

Kronos’ adventurous approach dates back to the ensemble’s origins. In 1973, David Harrington was inspired to form Kronos after hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels, a highly unorthodox, Vietnam War-inspired work featuring bowed water glasses, spoken word passages, and electronic effects. Kronos then began building a compellingly diverse repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Shostakovich, Webern), contemporary composers (Sofia Gubaidulina, Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), and artists from even farther afield (rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn).

Integral to Kronos’ work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world’s foremost composers. One of the quartet’s most frequent composer-collaborators is “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, whose work with Kronos includes the early Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector; Cadenza on the Night Plain and Salome Dances for Peace; 2002’s Sun Rings, a multimedia, NASA-commissioned ode to the earth and its people, featuring celestial sounds and images from space; and, most recently, The Cusp of Magic, commissioned in honor of Riley’s 70th birthday celebrations and premiered by Kronos and Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man in 2005. Kronos commissioned and recorded the three string quartets of Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, with whom the group has been working for nearly 20 years. The quartet has also collaborated extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, recording his complete string quartets and scores to films like Mishima and Dracula (a restored edition of the Bela Lugosi classic); Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose works are featured on the full-length 2005 release Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; Steve Reich, whose Kronos-recorded Different Trains earned a Grammy; Argentina’s Osvaldo Golijov, whose work with Kronos includes both compositions and extensive arrangements for albums like Kronos Caravan and Nuevo; and many more.

In addition to composers, Kronos counts numerous artists from around the world among its collaborators, including the legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle, featured on Kronos’ Grammy-nominated CD, You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood ; the renowned American soprano Dawn Upshaw; Mexican rockers Café Tacuba; the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks; and the unbridled British cabaret trio, the Tiger Lillies. Kronos has performed live with the likes of icons Allen Ginsberg, Zakir Hussain, Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, Betty Carter, and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by such diverse talents as Amon Tobin, Dan Zanes, DJ Spooky, Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traoré, Joan Armatrading and Don Walser.

Kronos’ music has also featured prominently in other media, including film (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, 21 Grams, Heat, True Stories) and dance, with noted choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and the duo Eiko & Koma setting pieces to Kronos’ music.

The Quartet spends five months of each year on tour, appearing in concert halls, clubs, and festivals around the world including BAM Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Barbican in London, WOMAD, UCLA’s Royce Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Shanghai Concert Hall and the Sydney Opera House. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on disc. The ensemble’s expansive discography on Nonesuch Records includes collections like Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers, which simultaneously topped Billboard’s Classical and World Music lists; 2000’s Kronos Caravan, whose musical “travels” span North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East; 1998’s ten-disc anthology, Kronos Quartet: 25 Years; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy–nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2003 Grammy-winner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite.

Kronos’ recording and performances reveal only a fraction of the group’s commitment to new music. As a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association has commissioned more than 500 new works and arrangements for string quartet. Music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Kronos have recently released sheet music for three signature works, all commissioned for Kronos, in the first volume of the Kronos Collection, a performing edition edited by Kronos. The quartet is committed to mentoring emerging professional performers, and in 2007 Kronos led its first Professional Training Workshop with four string quartets as part of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. One of Kronos’ most exciting initiatives is the Kronos: Under 30 Project, a unique commissioning and composer-in-residence program for composers under 30 years old, launched in conjunction with Kronos’ own 30th birthday in 2003. By cultivating creative relationships with such emerging talents and a wealth of other artists from around the world, Kronos reaps the benefit of 30 years’ wisdom while maintaining a fresh approach to music-making inspired by a new generation of composers and performers.

Track Listing:

1) Raag Yaman (43:44)
2) Chaiti Dhun (14:10)

The following BBC memorial article: Indian music’s soulful maestro was published on Monday, 21 August 2006:

Ustad Bismillah Khan was one of India’s most prolific musicians, gaining worldwide acclaim for playing the shehnai for more than eight decades.

He was credited with helping the shehnai - a type of wind instrument - attain a higher status in Indian classical music and taking it to a world stage. It had earlier considered to be an accompanying instrument.

In 2001, he was awarded India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna.

The shehnai is traditionally played at Indian weddings and ceremonies and its high-pitched notes and heart-tugging sound are considered auspicious.

A devout Muslim, Khan was a symbol of India’s religious pluralism and a symbol of harmony for people of different faiths.

He was often seen playing at various temples and on the banks of the holy river Ganges in the northern Indian city of Varanasi, his home town.

He was particularly proud of playing outside the famous Vishwanath temple in Varanasi.

Cultural icon

Born on 21 March 1916 in a small village in the northern Indian state of Bihar, Khan belonged to a family of court musicians. His ancestors were musicians in the princely state of Dumraon in Bihar.

Aged six, Khan moved to his maternal house, located close to the Ganges at Varanasi.

He started his formal training under his uncle, Ali Bux ‘Vilayatu’, who was a shehnai player attached to the Vishwanath temple.

Khan’s 1937 performance at the All India Music Conference in the eastern city of Calcutta brought shehnai to the centre stage of Indian classical music.

Among the high points in his career was when he played at Delhi’s Red Fort on the eve of India’s Independence in 1947.

Since the time of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Khan performed every Independence Day and state-owned television has shown his live performance immediately after the prime minister’s address to the nation.

Fear of flying

By the early 1960s Khan had gained worldwide reckoning through his records even before his first performance abroad.

He was reportedly afraid of flying and had turned down numerous invitations.

In 1966 after a lot of insistence and persuasion by the Indian government, he agreed to perform at the Edinburgh festival, but he demanded that he and his staff should be taken on an all-expenses-paid trip to Mecca and Medina first.

This was initially a demand to avoid travelling, but when the government agreed to his demand he ultimately performed at Edinburgh.

Soon after he was flooded with invitations and went on to perform in the US, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Canada, West Africa, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia and in many other cities across the world.

‘Moody’

Bismillah Khan was a very private person and shunned publicity. He believed he “should be heard, not seen”.

He was known to be moody during concerts. The BBC’s Ram Dutt Tripathi says he saw Khan throwing microphones and refusing to play unless everything was to his liking.

Khan played in just one Hindi film, Goonj Uthi Shehnai (Echoes of the Shehnai), in 1959.

He was reportedly annoyed and stormed off a film set when a music director interrupted his playing and asked him to play a note in a certain way. Since that day he never looked towards Bollywood.

He did, however, play shehnai in the popular Kannada-language film, Sanaadi Appanna, in the 1970s.

Khan was known for living a simple and austere life at his home in a narrow alleyway near the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi.

Despite his fame, he was often seen out and about the city in cycle-rickshaws, his favourite mode of transport.

In his last days he was not very well off as his income supported a joint family of nearly 60, including five sons, three daughters and their children.

In 2003 he even made an appeal to the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for financial help. After repeated pleas, he was granted 500,000 rupees ($10,760 ) in “delayed aid”.

The musician’s love for Varanasi was well-known - even when he was on his death-bed he refused to be treated in Delhi despite such offers from the government.

Speaking to the Indian media before his death, Khan asked why, when others came to die in Varanasi, he should leave the city to die somewhere else.