MUMBAI: Sitar maestro Ustad Shamim Ahmed Khan passed away due to massive cardiac arrest on Tuesday morning.

Khan 74, took his last breathe in a private hospital and was buried at Marine Lines cemetery. Renowned stars of music world attended his funeral including santoor maestro Pandit Satish Vyas, sitar player Pandit Nayan Ghosh, Agra Gharana vocalist Raja Miya, tabla maestro Yogesh Samsi and Aditya Kalyanpur.

The legend was one of the finest exponent of Hindustani instrumental music and a student of Pandit Ravi Shankar. Khan was born in 1938 in Baroda into a musical family of the Agra Gharana. At a very young age, he was initiated into vocal music by his father Ustad Ghulam Rasool but in 1955 his love and passion for sitar led him to join Pandit Ravi Shankar.

Shamim spent five decades of his life in Mumbai and had performed in New York's Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Barbican Centre and the Griffith Centre in Los Angeles. Khan was paired up with Ustad Alla Rakha, Buddy Rich and Paul Horn for the World Pacific recording company. He also recorded for a short movie in the Ocean and stage show 'A touch of brightness'.