Ravi Shankar – In Celebration / Angel Records 4x Audio CD, Box Set 1995 / CDCD 7243 5 55577 2 8

UPC 72435-55577-28

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.

In America, Angel Records, in conjunction with Dark Horse, issued Ravi Shankar: In Celebration during February 1996. In a December 1995 article announcing the release, Billboard magazine noted the "fortuitous bit of timing" provided by the Beatles' Anthology series, and the resulting "reviv[ed] interest in the '60s", a decade when Shankar's audience had grown to include Western rock fans through his association with Harrison. Shankar's career-spanning project also closely followed his reuniting with Yehudi Menuhin for a television broadcast, From the Sitar to the Guitar, detailing the birth of the gypsy and flamenco traditions from their roots in Indian music. The UK release of In Celebration took place in July 1996.  In the same Billboard article, Kozlowski stated his regret that it was not possible to represent Shankar's celebrated performance from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, while Shankar suggested that "We could have made 12 CDs, or 16, with all the material there was" but expressed particular pleasure at the inclusion of tracks such as "V 7½", "Adarini" and "Sanwaréy, Sanwaréy".

The packaging for the four discs featured a 64-page colour booklet with liner notes provided by music journalist Timothy White and recollections from Shankar on each of the compilation's 31 selections. The booklet credits Harihar Rao, a former student of Shankar's and a contributor to many of his musical projects from the 1960s onwards, as having provided "project research". In June 1996, Angel released the single-disc In Celebration – Highlights, which condensed the full compilation into what AllMusic's Thom Owens terms "the most essential items", totalling around an hour's worth of music.

Tracklist:

All selections written Ravi Shankar.