Bhubaneswar: Indian music composer and santoor maestro Padma Vibhushan Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma passed away due to cardiac arrest on Tuesday. He was 84. He had been suffering from kidney-related issues for the last six months and was on dialysis.
Born on January 13, 1938, in Jammu, Shiv Kumar was trained as a singer and tabla player by his father Uma Dutt Sharma, who was an accomplished Hindustani vocalist and musician.
He started learning santoor, a popular classical instrument, at the age of thirteen under his guidance and gave his first public performance in Mumbai in 1955.
Shiv Kumar is credited to have brought technical changes in the santoor. As a result, the Santoor gradually gained acceptance, and by the late 20th century the instrument had been solidly incorporated into the Hindustani tradition.
He released numerous albums of Hindustani santoor music and has also played music for many films, including Silsila (1981) and Chandni (1989). For his unique contribution to Indian music, he received a Sangeet Natak Akademi (India’s national academy of music, dance, and drama) award in 1986.
Shiv Kumar was awarded the Padma Shri in 1991 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001. He published his autobiography, Journey with a Hundred Strings: My Life in Music (with Ina Puri), in 2002.
