Shujaat Khan

Shujaat Khan is a brilliant and distinctively original sitarist whose sweet, singing tone, virtuosic technique and commanding presence have stamped him as the undeniable and the foremost heir to one of India’s most illustrious musical heritage, the Imdadkhani gharana.

Shujaat Khan is the seventh in an unbroken line of sitar virtuosi that includes many of the greatest names of this century - his great grandfather Imdad Khan and grandfather Inayat Khan were the foremost sitarists of their times. His father and guru is sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan, the creator of the gayaki ang or vocal playing style and one of the greatest Indian musicians of this century, and to many a legend in his own life time.

Shujaat Khan, born in 1960, started practicing at the age of three on a specially constructed small sized sitar and at the age of six was already giving public performances and acclaimed as a child prodigy. Shujaat Khan has been performing and touring both in India and around the world ever since. He has played at many of India’s most prestigious music festivals and has traveled abroad extensively, visiting nearly all of the countries in western and eastern Europe and Scandinavia as well as the United States, Canada, and Japan, China, Mongolia and other far eastern countries. In 1993-94 Shujaat Khan was artist-in-residence at the School of Music of the University of Washington in Seattle.