About Shivkumar Sharma
Shivkumar Sharma (13 January 1938 – 10 May 2022) was an Indian classical musician and santoor player who is credited with adapting the santoor for Indian classical music. As a music composer, he collaborated with Indian flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia under the collaborative name Shiv–Hari and composed music for such hit Indian films as Faasle (1985), Chandni (1989), and Lamhe (1991). Sharma was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1986 and the Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan (India's fourth and second highest civilian awards) in 1991 and 2001. == Early life == Sharma was born to a Dogra family of the Brahmin caste, on 13 January 1938, in Jammu, in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in British India (now in Jammu and Kashmir, India). Shivkumar's grandfather was the Rajpurohit (chief priest) of the royal temple of Pratap Singh, the king of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. His father Umadutt Sharma was a vocalist and a tabla player. His father started teaching him vocals and tabla, when he was just five. His father saw an opportunity to introduce him to the santoor, a hammered dulcimer, which was a folk instrument of Kashmir, and as per Sharma was known as Shatatantri Veena (transl. 100-wired instrument) in the Vedic period. Sharma spent his early years in Srinagar and saw the styles that integrated Sufi notes with traditional Kashmiri folk music and had his son play the instrument that was then new to Indian classical music. Sharma started learning santoor at the age of thirteen and gave his first public performance in Mumbai in 1955.
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