Ustad Imrat Khan has established his reputation not only by his mastery of two different instruments, the sitar and the surbahar, but also by the consistent purity and integrity of his presentations. Born in Calcutta in 1936, into a family of distinguished musicians tracing its pedigree back for several generations, Imrat Khan is a leading sitar player and one of the world`s best-known players of the surbahar. Still young when his famous father Ustad Enayat Khan (1895–1938) died, Imrat Khan was taught to play the surbahar and to sing in the highly ornamental classical vocal style of khayal by his mother, Bashiran Begum, and his maternal grandfather, Bandeh Hassan Khan.

He received his training on the sitar from his elder brother, Vilayat Khan, who was to become one of the leading sitar players of India. From his paternal uncle, Ustad Wahid Khan, he learned the surbahar. The brothers performed together for many years, as the first ever sitar and surbahar duo, pioneering the unique gayaki ang approach to Indian instrumental music. From the 1960s onwards, Imrat went solo, performing and recording extensively on both his instruments.

He has toured Europe, the Americas, and East and Southeast Asia, lecturing extensively, participating in major music festivals and performing at prestigious venues. He has composed for Satyajit Ray, Merchant Ivory and Hollywood. He received the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award from the president of India in 1988.

Imrat Khan is not only a consummate musician, but also a dedicated teacher teacher and lecturer at many prestigious universities and institutions around the world. He established the regular teaching of Indian classical music at Dartington College of Arts in England, where he taught for some years. For the last 15 years, he has been spending a portion of each year at Washington University in Saint Louis, teaching classical Indian music and instructing sitar students. Imrat Khan`s four sons, Nishat, Irshad, Wajahat and Shafaatullah, all classical musicians, continue to uphold the family legacy.