The Composer

Ustad Wajahat Khan is an accomplished composer and has led numerous successful world music collaborations in Indian classical, jazz, flamenco, rock, and Western classical. He has written orchestral and chamber scores for Western as well as Indian instruments working with renowned soloists and ensembles including two sarod concertos and an award winning quintet for sarod and string quartet.

This extraordinary collaboration of Indian and Western Classical music is written and performed by Wajahat Khan. The highly acclaimed work was premiered at a sold out Wigmore Hall in London to a standing ovation with the one of the UK's leading international ensembles, the Medici String Quartet. It has also been performed with other renowned international quartets such as the Ciurlionis Quartet. Wajahat Khan has performed this work at prestigious venues and festivals including the Megaron (Athens), the Sage Gateshead (UK) and the festivals of Bath (UK), Vilnius (Lithuania), Geneva (Switzerland) and Istanbul (Turkey). The recording release has also received rave reviews globally.

Wajahat Khan has expanded the repertoire of the sarod into Western classical symphony orchestras with two sarod concertos, receiving worldwide acclaim. In 1991 he performed the world premiere of his first sarod concerto in Kassell in the presence of the German President. Since then he has collaborated and performed with leading international orchestras such as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the KwaZulu Natal Philharmonic Orchestra (Durban) and the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra in South Africa.

Launched at the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Hall in London for the 50th anniversary of India's Independence, Wajahat Khan created for the first time, an ensemble comprised solely of all the traditional instruments and percussion that are at the forefront of North Indian classical music scene today - sarod, sitar, surbahar, sarangi, santoor, shehnai, bansuri, pakhawaj and tabla played by some of the leading soloists of the UK. Subsequent performances have included the prestigious Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK.

Wajahat Khan continues to work as a composer and performer globally. He has toured Europe and the UK on several occasions with his own world music ensemble which includes the renowned flamenco/jazz guitarist Eduardo Niebla. He has also performed with respected musicians in other genres such as the Japanese shakuhachi maestro Yoshikazu Iwamoto and composed/recorded for the BRIT Award winning rock band Kula Shaker. More recently his duet performances and tours with the great Indian shehnai virtuoso Ustad Ali Ahmad Khan have been memorable. Their CD was the first sarod and shehnai duet ever recorded - another of Wajahat Khan's innovations to the sarod and Indian classical music.

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