 "Santoor maestro Pandit Bhajan Sopori dies after prolonged illness")
“The santoor maestro Pandit Bhajan Sopori was diagnosed with colon cancer last June and had been in the hospital for the last three weeks,” his son and santoor player Abhay said. The last rites will be held at the Lodhi Road crematorium on Friday. “He would have celebrated his 74th birthday on June 22. We lost a really great musician, a great human being and a great father. It’s really hard for me to believe this and imagine my life without him,” Abhay said. Born in Srinagar in 1948, Pandit Bhajan Sopori had a double master’s degree in Indian classical music specialising both in sitar and santoor. Sopori received multiple awards throughout his career, including the Padma Shri in 2004, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1992 and the Jammu and Kashmir State Lifetime Achievement Award, Sopori learnt western classical music from Washington University and Hindustani music from his father and grandfather. Condolences and prayers poured in for the santoor maestro. Union minister Prahlad Joshi took to Twitter to express pain over the loss.
Former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that Sopori was a “colossus in the world of classical Indian music”.
Durga Jasraj also mourned the loss on Twitter.
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