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With A Legend In His Living Room
Ravi Shankar brought classical Indian music into the mainstream, to celebrated concert halls, jazz festivals, rock concerts and pop radio. But he also brought the mainstream to Indian music. Even when collaborating with superstars from George Harrison to Conservatory alumnus and violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin, Shankar sought mainly to preserve and promulgate the music of his own country. A year after his death, Conservatory alumnus Barry Phillips '90 continues to carry out the pandit's mission. In fall 2011, Shankar asked Phillips to record him playing sitar at home in Encinitas, California. The Living Room Sessions Part 1 won a 2013 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album. Part 2 was just nominated for a 2014 Grammy.
At first, says Phillips, it seemed Shankar planned the sessions just for the fun of it. "He was recalling ragas from the 40s and 50s and things, some that he had composed and some that were established ragas. It was kind of like a trip down memory lane in a sense." At the end of the three days, Phillips was taken by surprise when Shankar asked him to trim the beginnings and ends of each track and release a CD.
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Phillips assists Shankar in composing his
Symphony No. 1 in 2006
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Phillips joined Shankar's orchestra as a cellist in 1996 and helped him write works for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and violinist Joshua Bell. Transcribing music with Shankar into western notation, Phillips learned "a whole new vocabulary of melody and rhythm" which deeply inflected his own musical sensibility. Phillips' recent CD Raga & Raj is inspired by British baroque musicians who, steeped in the music of eighteenth-century Calcutta, compiled a volume called Hindoostanee Airs. It also includes new works in the same vein by composer Lou Harrison and Phillips himself. Currently, Phillips is at work on another CD, producing a fifty-year retrospective of Ravi Shankar recordings and continuing to compose; the Santa Cruz Chamber Players under artistic director and flutist Lars Johannesson '89 premieres his latest work in February.
Phillips notes that Shankar could infuse the most high-pressured gigs with an atmosphere of friendliness and warmth, a skill he'd love to possess as a producer. He also hopes to match Shankar's sense of detail. "He wanted the musical mood to be absolutely right for every note. Not in a picky way, just in a way that he loved music so much." Shankar no doubt appreciated Phillips' own attention to detail and devotion to music, qualities now memorialized in the master's final recordings.
Take Note: Conservatory News and Events, January 6, 2014
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