Sitar Player Ravi Shankar Debuts First Symphony With London Philharmonic at Age 90

LONDON (July 1) -- "East is East," Rudyard Kipling once said, "and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." If the "Jungle Book" author had met Ravi Shankar, he'd have realized that he was talking utter nonsense.

The sitar virtuoso has spent much of the past 50 years educating Western listeners about the classical sounds of India, often through collaborations with artists as diverse as The Beatles' George Harrison, composer Philip Glass and jazz saxophonist and flautist Bud Shank.

Now at age 90, Shankar is about to unveil his most ambitious East-West concoction yet. The world music guru's first-ever symphony will have its premiere tonight, in the British capital with the London Philharmonic and Shankar's sitar-playing daughter, Anoushka.

Ravi Shankar, right, performs with his daughter Anoushka Shankar in Calcutta, India, on Feb. 7, 2009.

Bikas Das, AP

Ravi Shankar, here at a 2009 performance in India, is to present his first-ever symphony Thursday in London. His daughter, Anoushka, left, will also take part.

"This was conceived entirely for the Western symphony orchestra, so I had to eliminate the traditional Indian instruments but transfer some of their spirit on to the Western instruments," Shankar told BBC radio this morning. "I wrote it in Indian notation, which David Murphy, who is a student of mine and a wonderful conductor, has interpreted very well."

Listeners unfamiliar with the strange structures of Indian classical music are likely to find tonight's performance to be an auditory education. Shankar told the BBC that, unlike many European or American classical works, his symphony doesn't follow a set narrative, but instead weaves through a "very abstract" structure. Each of the piece's four movements "are based on different ragas," the hypnotic melodic modes that dominate Indian classical music.

For Shankar, the symphony is a logical conclusion to his past experiments with Western forms. Together with Yehudi Menuhin he crafted the Duet for Sitar & Violin -- which showed the connections between Eastern European folk and the classical traditions of northern India -- and worked with composer-pianist Andre Previn on the Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra.

Conductor Murphy hints that, while Shankar may be 90, his latest collaboration places him at the cutting edge of a new genre fusing the best of East and West. "It now really does seem like a new 'Indo-Classic' musical genre is being born," Murphy writes on his blog. "I believe it will be a very important musical journey in the next few years, bringing both musical cultures closer together whilst keeping the purity of both traditions intact."