Ravi Shankar: In Celebration is a compilation box set by Indian classical musician and composer Ravi Shankar, released in 1996 on Angel Records in conjunction with Dark Horse Records. The four discs cover Shankar's international career, from the 1950s to the mid 1990s, and include recordings originally released on the World Pacific, HMV, Angel, Apple, Dark Horse and Private Music record labels. Shankar's friend George Harrison compiled and co-produced the set, which was issued as part of year-long celebrations for Shankar's 75th birthday.
Each disc of In Celebration adopts a musical theme covering a facet of Shankar's varied career – specifically, traditional ragas; orchestral works; collaborations with Western classical musicians; and vocal and experimental pieces, particularly in the jazz genre. Although Indian classical music receives relatively little coverage, the compilation includes examples of Shankar's work with artists such as Yehudi Menuhin, Bud Shank, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Philip Glass, André Previn, Harrison and the Music Festival from India. Among the previously unreleased selections, "Adarini" marks the recording debut of sitarist Anoushka Shankar, the youngest daughter of Ravi Shankar.
The box set has received critical acclaim for providing an effective retrospective of Shankar's musical career. It was followed by In Celebration – Highlights, an abbreviated, single-disc version of the full compilation, and led to further joint projects by Shankar and Harrison, including the 1997 studio album Chants of India.
Background
In his book The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, Peter Lavezzoli describes the years 1989 to 1995 as "a period of several milestones in [Ravi] Shankar's life and career". The first of these was the 50th anniversary of Shankar's debut as a performer, a concert career that had begun with his and sarodya Ali Akbar Khan's duet at the 1939 Allahabad Music Conference. In 1995, Shankar turned 75, the year-long celebrations for which included a concert at New Delhi's Siri Fort, in February, and one at the Barbican Centre, London, in July.
Away from his life as a performer and composer, in September 1992 Shankar's longstanding heart problems led to him undergoing angioplasty, shortly after which his only son, Shubho, died. Shankar's friend George Harrison visited him following the angioplasty operation, and the two musicians began re-establishing a social and musical bond that had waned somewhat since the late 1970s, when Shankar cut himself off from many of his Western friends. After Shankar, Harrison and their families holidayed together over Christmas 1994, Harrison began compiling a career retrospective, Ravi Shankar: In Celebration, as part of Angel Records' celebrations for Shankar's 75th birthday year. Harrison co-produced the four-disc compilation with photographer and Shankar archivist Alan Kozlowski. The project partly coincided with Harrison's work on the Beatles' Anthology TV series and album releases, and led to him serving as editor on Raga Mala, Shankar's second autobiography, and the two of them collaborating on the Chants of India album (1997).
Content
In Celebration divides Shankar's then 40-year international career into distinct themes, as reflected in the title for each of the four discs: "Classical Sitar", "Orchestral and Ensembles", "East–West Collaboration" and "Vocal and Experimental". The content includes items that were either previously unissued in the United States and Britain, or had been long unavailable by 1995. Angel executive Steve Murphy later credited the widespread goodwill felt towards Shankar as facilitating the retrieval of recordings from a variety of sources, following the decision in May that year to begin compiling In Celebration.
"Classical Sitar"
Disc one includes ragas first recorded for Richard Bock's World Pacific Records between 1957 and 1967. On four of the disc's five selections, Shankar performs on sitar accompanied only by a tabla player – variously, Chatur Lal, Alla Rakha, Kanai Dutt or Kumar Bose. Among the featured ragas are Shankar's interpretations of Marwa, Bhatiyar and Charukesi, the latter a Carnatic raga, from the South Indian tradition, that he adapted for the Hindustani (or North Indian) discipline.
Based on Raga Khamaj, "Adarini" was a Shankar composition written for his then-teenage daughter Anoushka Shankar, who made her Western concert debut at the Barbican birthday recital in July 1995. "Adarini" marked Anoushka's debut as a recording artist; recorded in Encinitas, California on 2 September 1995, the piece features her on sitar and Zakir Hussain on tabla.