Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka Shankar (born 9 June 1981) is a British-Indian-American sitar player, producer, film composer and activist. She was the youngest and first woman to receive a British House of Commons Shield; she has had 7 Grammy Awards nominations and was the first Indian musician to perform live and to serve as presenter at the ceremony. She performs across multiple genres and styles – classical and contemporary, acoustic and electronic.

Early life

Shankar was brought into the world in London and her experience growing up was split among London and Delhi. She is the little girl of Sukanya Shankar and Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who was 61 when she was conceived. Through her dad, she is likewise the stepsister of American vocalist Norah Jones (conceived Geetali Norah Shankar), and Shubhendra “Shubho” Shankar, who kicked the bucket in 1992. As a teen, Shankar lived in Encinitas, California, and went to San Dieguito High School Academy. A 1999 distinctions graduate and Homecoming Queen, she chose to seek after a profession in music as opposed to go to school.

Shankar started preparing on the sitar with her dad Ravi Shankar at seven years old. As a feature of her preparation, she started going with him on the tanpura at his exhibitions from the age of ten, absorbing the music and becoming accustomed to the stage. She gave her most memorable public sitar execution on 27 February 1995 at 13 years old, at Siri Fort in New Delhi as a component of her dad’s 75th birthday festivity show. For this performance debut, she was joined by tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. Her most memorable involvement with the recording studio came that very year when Angel Records delivered an exceptional four-CD box set brought In Celebration, to stamp her dad’s birthday. By the age of fourteen, she was going with her dad at shows all over the planet. At fifteen, she helped her dad on the milestone collection Chants of India, created by George Harrison. Under both their direction, she was accountable for documentation and at last of leading the entertainers who partook in the recording. After this experience, the heads of Angel Records came to her folks’ home to request to sign her, and Shankar marked her most memorable select recording contract with Angel/EMI when she was sixteen.

She delivered her most memorable collection, Anoushka, in 1998, trailed by Anourag in 2000. In 1999 Shankar moved on from secondary school with distinction, yet ruled against college for starting to visit as an independent craftsman. Both Shankar and her stepsister Norah Jones were designated for Grammy grants in 2003 when Anoushka turned into the most youthful chosen one in the World Music classification for her third collection, Live at Carnegie Hall. Having delivered three collections of Indian traditional music, Shankar removed quite a long while from recording and zeroed in her energy on setting up a good foundation for herself as a performance show entertainer beyond her dad’s group. In that time, she visited around the world, playing a normal of 50-60 shows each year. 2005 brought the arrival of her fourth collection RISE, her most memorable self-created, self-formed, non-traditional collection, acquiring her one more Grammy assignment in the Best Contemporary World Music class. In February 2006 she turned into the main Indian to play at the Grammy Awards, playing material from RISE.

Shankar, as a team with Indian maker, writer and performer, Karsh Kale, delivered Breathing Under Water on 28 August 2007. It is a blend of traditional sitar and electronica beats and tunes. Eminent visitor vocals incorporated her fatherly relative Norah Jones, Sting, and her dad, who played out a sitar two part harmony with her. In 2011 Shankar endorsed with record name Deutsche Grammophon as a selective craftsman. This undeniable the start of a productive recording and imaginative period for Shankar, during which time she kept on refining the sitar sound and melodic thoughts she had become known for. She procured a third Grammy Award designation in 2013 for Traveler, an investigation of the common history among flamenco and Indian traditional music, which was created by Javier Limón and highlighted craftsmen like Buika, Pepe Habichuela and Duquende. As Shankar had finished with Rise, she made an extraordinarily handpicked outfit of artists with whom to play out this cross-kind music, and played north of 100 shows overall on the side of Traveler. In 2013 she delivered an individual collection called Traces of You, which was delivered a while after the death of her dad Ravi Shankar. Created by Nitin Sawhney, and highlighting her stepsister Norah Jones as the sole vocal entertainer, Traces of You procured Shankar a fourth Grammy selection in the World Music class. In July 2015 Shankar delivered Home, her most memorable simply old style collection of Indian Ragas. Self-created and delivered, Home was kept north of seven days in October 2014 in Shankar’s new, meticulously designed home-studio.

Following Home, Shankar delivered Land of Gold (2016) – her fourth collection with Deutsche Grammophon; the worldwide exile emergency and the extraordinary differentiation between having the option to accommodate her recently conceived second kid and the feeling of feebleness to reduce the unfairness and agony occurring as the world looked on gave the motivation to this genuine and confident collection. The delivery highlights various kinds of commitments – from the vocal of MIA and Alev Lenz, to the speech of Remain the Sea by Veteran British entertainer Vanessa Redgrave. There is likewise areas of strength for an impact in the recordings, loaned by the development of movie Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement). Place that is known for Gold remixescame out around the same time with remixes by Mowgli, Karsh Kale, Matt Robertson, Grain and East London-based aggregate Shiva Soundsystem.

In 2019 came the gathering Reflections, a 20-year review collection that returns to the best of Shankar’s multifaceted back list with Deutsche Grammophon, including a significant number of her past joint efforts with individual craftsmen and makers. The arrival of ‘Affection Letters’ in 2020 imprints an alternate bearing for the universally celebrated craftsman; the co-created EP is a gathering of piercing melodies composed across 2018-’19, during a period of significant transition – disaster, homegrown disturbance, medical problems – and offers a change in closeness and content at a crucial time in her profession as she signs to her new record name, Mercury KX. A large group of exploring ladies highlight on ‘Adoration Letters’ including artist and co-maker Alev Lenz, twin sister vocal team Ibeyi, artist and cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson, prestigious Indian vocalist Shilpa Rao, Brooklyn-based dominating specialist Heba Kadry (Björk, Slowdive) and British sound dominating designer Mandy Parnell (Aphex Twin, The XX).

Shankar consistently teams up with electronic music maker Gold Panda, percussionist Manu Delago and the Britten Sinfonia strings, all of which showed up, including Shankar, at the 2020 BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall. All through her profession, Shankar has made numerous visitor appearances on accounts by different craftsmen, among them Sting, Lenny Kravitz, Thievery Corporation and Nitin Sawhney. In 2010 she teamed up with Jazz Legend Herbie Hancock, on his collection The Imagine Project, close by Pink, India.Arie, Jeff Beck, John Legend, Chaka Khan, The Chieftains, Wayne Shorter and Dave Matthews. The task was likewise recorded for a narrative going with the delivery and showing him working with the specialists who teamed up on the undertaking.

Around the same time she included on the track Rebirth by Indian combination bunch MIDIval Punditz. In 2012 the collection Area 52 by Rodrigo and Gabriela’s collection highlighted a visitor appearance from Shankar’s sitar act of spontaneity. She played out the Raga Piloo with musician Patricia Kopatchinskajaduring a show in Konzerthaus Berlin, Germany in April 2016 – the tune was initially made, performed and recorded by Ravi Shankaras a two part harmony with Yehudi Menuhin on the collection West Meets East, Volume 2 of every 1968.

All the more as of late, she has played on the track ‘Ama La’ on the Dalai Lama’s most memorable music collection, ‘Internal World’ that was delivered in July 2020 on his 85th birthday celebration. Soon after she showed up on Peradam, the third and last portion of collection set of three “Wonderful Vision” by Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective close by Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Tenzin Choegyal; she likewise worked together with Grammy-Nominated Deva Premal on the melody Prabhujee, discharge in November 2020. On 13 November 2020, Shankar was highlighted on “Quit Crying Your Heart Out” as a component of the BBC Radio 2’s Allstars’ Children in Need good cause single. The single appeared at number 7 on the Official UK Singles Chart and number 1 on both the Official UK Singles Sales Chart and the Official UK Singles Download Chart.

Classic Sitar

Anoushka has consistently proceeded to visit and proceed as a traditional sitarist, both inside simply Indian old style outfit yet in addition as a soloist supporting her dad’s organizations with the world’s driving ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker, MDR Sinfonieorchester, Metropole Orkest and Lucerne Symphony.

Shankar is the sole entertainer of Ravi Shankar’s first and second Concertos for Sitar and Orchestra, playing out numerous times under the authority of regarded directors, for example, unbelievable Zubin Mehta, Jules Buckley, Kristjan Järvi and Jakob Hrusa. In January 2009 she was the sitar soloist close by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra debuting her dad’s third Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra, and in July 2010 she debuted Ravi Shankar’s most memorable ensemble for sitar and symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall. She has likewise acted in two part harmonies with specialists, for example, violin player Joshua Bell, in a sitar-cello two part harmony with Mstislav Rostropovich, and with flute player Jean-Pierre Rampal, playing both sitar and piano.

Film Scoring

Shankar moved into scoring with a Bengali children’s song made for Director Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, featuring Keira Knightley, Jude Law and Tannishtha Chatterjee. The writer’s movement into structure for films drove her to one of her most difficult bits of work – the scoring of British Film Institute’s rebuilding of uncommon Indian quiet Shiraz: A Romance of India (Original 1928, scored in 2017). She additionally played out the piece inhabit screenings of the film, that was debuted as 2017’s London Film Festival Archive Gala and afterward showed up at the worldwide film celebration We Are One on 2 June 2020.

Around the same time (2017) she co-composed and performed on the end-title melody “Gain the Ocean” for the Judi Dench-featured British-American personal show Victoria and Abdul coordinated by Stephen Frears. All the more as of late she co-made the score to Mira Nair’s (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, The Namesake) BBC 6-section series A Suitable Boy (2020); in light of Vikram Seth’s exemplary novel of a similar title, the show created by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones’ Diary, War and Peace, Les Misérables) stars Tabu, Tanya Maniktala and Ishaan Khatter.

Acting, writing and narrating

Shankar has likewise wandered into acting (Dance Like a Man, 2004) and composing. She composed a history of her dad, Bapi: The Love of My Life, in 2002 and has added to different books. As a reporter she composed month to month sections for India’s First City Magazine for quite some time, and burned through one year as a week by week writer for India’s second biggest paper, the Hindustan Times. She described Stolen Innocence: India’s Untold Story of Human Trafficking, a 2017 narrative by movie producers Chris Davis, Casey Allred and Lindsay Daniels, recounting the genuine accounts of young ladies who got away from sex subjection in India and Nepal.

Benefit concerts

Over the range of her melodic profession, Shankar has habitually been welcome to perform for benefit shows all over the planet. In 2000 she imparted the stage to Madonna and Bryan Adams st the Summer’s Tibetan Peace Garden Benefit show coordinated in London by Sting’s significant other Trudie Styler on 29th November 2002, Shankar was the highlighted entertainer of the “Indian” a big part of the Concert for George, a post mortem recognition for the life and music of George Harrison, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She opened the show by playing an independent sitar instrumental named “Your Eyes”. Likewise on the sitar, she performed George Harrison’s “The Inner Light” with Jeff Lynne. Ultimately, she directed another organization, Arpan, composed by her dad. The organization included Eric Clapton playing acoustic guitar, and a full symphony of Indian and Western performers. The show was designed according to Ravi Shankar’s advantage show with Harrison, the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh. Likewise in 2002 she performed close by Patti Labelle, Elton John, Nina Simone and others for Rock for the Rainforest, the advantage show coordinated by Sting and Trudie Styler at Carnegie Hall. Shankar was welcomed by Richard Gere and Philip Glass to act in a show at Avery Fisher Hall in 2003 in help of the Healing the Divide: A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation. Shankar and Jethro Tull deferred a show booked for 29 November 2008 in Mumbai after the 2008 Mumbai assaults. They revamped the exhibition as A Billion Hands Concert, an advantage execution for casualties of the assaults, and held it on 5 December 2008. Shankar remarked on this choice expressing that: “As a performer, this is the manner by which I talk, how I express the resentment inside me our whole visit has been changed by these occasions and, surprisingly, however the construction of the show might continue as before, genuinely maybe we are saying much more.” In 2016 Shankar helped assemble names and marked Letter to the Guardian for a call for activity to help Syrian Refugees. In February 2018 she read a sonnet as a feature of Letters Live for Help Refugees, close by different entertainers, for example, Gemma Arterton, Andrew Scott, Jade Anouka, Cara Theobaold, Florence Welch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Joely Richardso among numerous others. In July 2018 she set out on a short US visit through Land of Gold to assist with raising assets for the charitable association Help Refugees.

Awards and honours

• British House of Commons Shield, 1998
• Woman of the Year awarded on International Women’s Day 2003 in India
• Named as one of 20 Asian Heroes by the Asia edition of Time in 2004
• First Grammy Nomination in 2003 in the World Music category for her third-album, Live at Carnegie Hall. She was the youngest-ever nominee in this category.
• In 2004 she received National Award nomination for best supporting actress in the film Dance Like A Man in 2004.
• In 2005 she was nominated for another Grammy, in the Best Contemporary World Music category for her fourth album RISE.
• In 2012 she won Best Artist in the Songlines Music Award for her album Traveller.
• In 2013 she was nominated for her third Grammy, in the Best World Music category for her album Traveller.
• In 2014 she was nominated for a fourth Grammy in the Best World Music category for her album Traces of You.
• In 2015 she was nominated for a fifth Grammy in the Best World Music Category for her album “Home”.
• In 2016 she was nominated for a sixth Grammy in the Best World Music Category for her album “Land of Gold”.
• In 2017 she won the Eastern Eye Arts, Culture & Theatre Awards (ACTA) Award for Music for outstanding achievements in the Indian classical and progressive world music scenes.
• Asteroid 292872 Anoushankar, discovered by Italian amateur astronomer Silvano Casulli, was named in her honour. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 12 January 2017
• In 2018 she won the 3rd Eastern Eye Arts, Culture & Theatre Awards (ACTA) for the score to 1928 BFI film ‘Shiraz’.
• In July 2021 she received the Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music (Hon RAM).
• In November 2020 she was nominated for the RTS (Royal Television Society) Craft & Design Awards 2020 for the music she and Alex Heffes composed for A Suitable Boy, A Lookout Point Production for BBC One.
• In 2021 she was nominated for a seventh Grammy in the Best World Music Category for her album “Love Letters”.
• In 2021 she was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for ‘A Suitable Boy’ Score.

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