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. [Sharon Isbin]

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.

1. Capricho árabe (Live)
2. Sacred Evening - Alap Yaman (Live)
3. Sacred Evening - Raga Yaman (Live)
4. By the Moon - Alap Behag (Live)
5. By the Moon - Raga Behag (Live)
6. Raga Ganesh Kalyan (Live)
7. Raga Bahar (Live)
8. Raga Bhatyali - Folk Music of Bengal (Live)
9. Romancing Earth - Alap Pilu (Live)
10. Romancing Earth - Raga Pilu (Live)

This gorgeously meditative and vibrant music, played by these wonderful acclaimed artists and musicians, the combination of the guitar with the sarod and tabla being ethereal and unique, opens on the delicately spun Capricho árabe and the reverberating Sacred Evening - Alap Yaman, and then we get the free-flowing Sacred Evening - Raga Yaman, the thoughtful By the Moon - Alap Behag and the upbeat and joyfully spirited By the Moon - Raga Behag.

Along next is the intricate Raga Ganesh Kalyan and the sumptuously propellant Raga Bahar and they are in turn followed by the playful Raga Bhatyali - Folk Music of Bengal, rounding out on the atmospherically-charged Romancing Earth - Alap Pilu, closing on an invigoratingly rapturous Romancing Earth - Raga Pilu.

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