Memorial Service Set for Shubho Shankar

A memorial service will be held Saturday for Garden Grove musician and composer Shubho Shankar, son of renowned sitar player Ravi Shankar.

The nondenominational memorial will be at 2:30 p.m. at the Vedic Samaj-Om Center, a Hindu religious and educational center in Bellflower.

Shubho Shankar, who had been performing with his father for a decade, was 50 when he died of pneumonia on Sept. 15 at Los Alamitos Medical Center.

A member of one of India’s most prominent musical families, Shankar studied the sitar as a youth with both his father and his mother, Annapurna Devi, a master surbahar (bass sitar) player and daughter of the legendary Indian musician Ustad Allaudin Khan.

He is survived by his wife, Linda; their son, Somnath, 17; their daughter, Kaveri, 13, and his 71-year-old father, who is recuperating in London from surgery to clear blocked arteries.

Family friend Harihar Rao said the memorial will be a loosely structured gathering of friends and artists, some of whom will perform music and dance. “It will be a very free-flowing remembrance,” Rao said.

The public is welcome, Rao said. The center is at 9999 Palm Ave. Information: (310) 866-2646.