Both the CD format of the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India album and a DVD of their performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London were issued for the first time on the 2010 Shankar–Harrison box set Collaborations.

[2] The tour featured musicians such as Shivkumar Sharma, Jitendra Abhisheki and Palghat Raghu,[3] with Shankar's regular jugalbandi partner, sarodya Ali Akbar Khan, joining the ensemble for their concerts in California.

[9] He was particularly inspired after hearing Shankar's orchestral piece Nava Rasa Ranga while in Bombay, where Harrison had recorded part of his 1968 solo album Wonderwall Music.

The presentation of the Music Festival was the first project undertaken by Harrison under the auspices of his Material World Charitable Foundation, one of the aims of which was to "sponsor diverse forms of artistic expression and to encourage the exploration of alternative life views and philosophies".

Gopalkrishnan on mridangam and vocals, South Indian violin virtuoso L. Subramaniam, sarangi master Sultan Khan, santoor pioneer Shivkumar Sharma, and Gopal Krishan, credited with the emergence of the vichitra veena in that musical genre.

A sitarist and percussion player, Harihar Rao had been a student of Shankar's during the 1950s before winning a Fulbright scholarship and taking a position in the ethnomusicology department of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

[26] Midway through the proceedings, on 6 September, Harrison held a press conference in London and announced plans for the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India tour of Europe, lasting through into October.

[27] A co-headlining North American tour would follow,[28][29] for which Harrison, as the main attraction, was growing increasingly unprepared, such was his dedication to this project, and after having already lavished months of his time on The Place I Love by Splinter, another Dark Horse act.

The orchestra was then pared down to a sixteen-piece – omitting shehnai veteran Anant Lal and Kamala Chakravarty – for Shankar and Harrison's high-profile tour of the United States and Canada, which began at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum on 2 November.

[58] The release coincided with a concert by Shankar at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York – a dawn-to-dusk recital celebrating twenty years of performances in the West by the artist.

[59] Also in March 1976, the Californian television station KCET broadcast a 30-minute programme titled Ravi Shankar's Music Festival with George Harrison & Don Ellis.

[37] Produced by Taylor Hackford and filmed in Los Angeles in 1975, the show was hosted by Don Ellis,[60] a pioneer in Indo jazz[61] who had studied Indian music under Harihar Rao at UCLA.

[65] In his review of In Celebration, Bruce Eder of AllMusic reserved especial praise for the fourth disc, which contains several of Shankar's collaborations with Harrison, writing: "From the opening 'Vandana', it draws us into a realm of music that is so sublimely beautiful that it makes everything that has come before it, in all its bejeweled splendor, seem almost plain and pale by comparison.

[70][71] Writing for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger considers Collaborations to be a "bountiful gathering of some of Shankar's more accessible recordings" that has "value not just for Beatles completists [through Harrison's involvement], but also for more general appreciators of traditional Indian music".

Unterberger describes the Music Festival from India studio album as offering "a more diverse group of arrangements than is heard on many Indian recordings" and "[a] mood [that] is largely one of devout humility interspersed with some low-key, joyful boisterousness".

[72] PopMatters contributing editor Sachyn Mital considers the album to be "lively and instrument focused", and writes of its music content: "'Bhajan' is a joyful chant to Krishna, Gopal and Govind, while 'Naderdani' has ... sitar evoking playfulness with masterful precision.

"[36] While noting the "great integrity" behind the 2010 box set, Joe Marchese of The Second Disc writes of Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India: "The album's sounds are exotic, but immediately transporting.

[74] Nari, a 2015 multimedia project by singer and violinist Gingger Shankar[75] (the daughter of Viji and L. Subramanium, and granddaughter of Lakshmi),[76] was partly inspired by the 1974 Music Festival and the North American tour with Harrison.

Completing the ring of musicians along this curved riser is sitarist Kartick Kumar; Gopal Krishan, behind a raised vichitra veena; and finally Shivkumar Sharma, behind the large, harpsichord-like santoor.

The DVD's bonus feature, directed by David Kew,[82] shows Hicks and Anoushka Shankar at work on the mix for pieces released in this concert film section.