Kadri Gopalnath was a youngster growing up in a village in southern India when he first heard the alto saxophone at a performance by the Mysore Palace Band, a holdover from the years of British rule that mixed Indian and European repertoire.

The saxophone’s sound struck Kadri as something different from the penetrating drone of the nadhaswaram, the traditional double-reed instrument that his father played every day in the local temple, and that Kadri had been learning. The alto saxophone’s blooming quality felt exotic, and it drew him in.

With help from neighbors and attendees of the temple, his father pulled together money and sent away for a saxophone. But rather than learn traditional Western repertoire, Kadri set about interpolating the ragas (harmonic modes) and gamakams (ornaments and slurs) of classical South Indian music into saxophone playing. His main strategy was to adapt the vocal inflections of Indian singers to the instrument, though his sound was always redolent of the nadhaswaram’s pinched, scalding tone.

Mr. Gopalnath would eventually become one of the most prominent classical musicians in India, and the first to show on a grand scale how the saxophone, despite its Western-tempered tuning, could be a real asset in Carnatic music, not just a novelty.­