Ali Akbar Khan, an Indian musician and composer who helped introduce the classical music of north India to the West, has died. He was 87.

Khan died of kidney failure Thursday at his home in the Bay Area city of San Anselmo, Calif., according to an announcement on the Web site of Ali Akbar College of Music, Khan’s teaching facility in Northern California.

The announcement said Khan had been a dialysis patient since 2004 but taught at the college until two weeks ago.

Considered a “National Living Treasure” in India, Khan in 1991 was the first Indian musicianto to receive a MacArthur Foundation grant. He was also awarded the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship, the highest U.S. honor in traditional arts, in 1997.

A legendary player and teacher of the “sarod,” a stringed instrument as popular as the sitar, Khan recorded more than 95 albums. He was nominated for five Grammy Awards and composed scores for both Indian and Western movies, including the 1963 film “The Householder” and the 1993 Bernardo Bertolucci film “Little Buddha.”

But to many his influence was in expanding the appeal of Indian music.

“He was instrumental in transforming Indian music into an international tradition in a way that was unprecedented,” said David Trasoff of Los Angeles, a senior student of Khan’s who has studied north Indian classical music and sarod performance for the last 36 years.

“What he attempted to do and — I believe succeeded in doing — was to transplant this very deep musical tradition by committing himself to a level of teaching that resulted in a number of proteges who have gone on to present this music throughout the world.”

Khan was born April 14, 1922, in Shivpur, East Bengal (now Bangladesh). He began playing the sarod and other instruments as a boy. His father was Ustad Allauddin Khan, widely considered the greatest figure in north Indian music in the 20th century.

Under his father’s tutelage, Khan’s training was rigid and vigorous with sessions often lasting 18 hours a day. He studied with his father for decades.

“I started to learn this music at the same time I began to talk,” Khan told the Los Angeles Times some years ago. “So it is as natural to me as speaking. It’s not something I have to think about any more than I have to think about the words I’m saying.”

Khan is survived by his wife, Mary Khan, and 11 surviving children from his present and two former marriages. Three of his sons — Aashish, who teaches Indian music at California Institute of the Arts, and Alam and Manik — are sarod players.