Anoushka Shankar

At 42 years old, Anoushka Shankar has this physical status:

Anoushka Shankar (born 9 June 1981) is an Indian sitar player and composer.

Ravi Shankar's father is a musician, and Sukanya Rajan is her mother.

She is Norah Jones' half-sister.

Early life

Shankar was born in London and her childhood was divided between London and Delhi. She is the niece of Sukanya Shankar and India's sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who was 61 when she was born. She is also the half-sister of American singer Norah Jones (born Geetali Norah Shankar) and Shubhendra "Shubho" Shankar, who died in 1992.

Shankar lived in Encinitas, California, and attended San Dieguito High School Academy as a child. She opted to pursue a career in music rather than attending college as a 1999 honours graduate and Homecoming Queen.

Personal life

Shankar is the half-sister of Norah Jones and the niece of Pandit Ravi Shankar and Sukanya Rajan. She grew up in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. In 2010, she married British director Joe Wright. They have two sons (born 2011 and 2015). They separated in December 2017 and announced their divorce in September 2019. She and her sons are married in London.

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Career

Shankar and her father Ravi Shankar began training on the sitar at the age of seven. She began accompanying him on the tanpura at his performances from the age of ten, soaking up the music and becoming acclimated to the stage. On February 27, 1995, she gave her first public sitar appearance at Siri Fort in New Delhi as part of her father's 75th birthday celebration concert. She was accompanied by tabla maestro Zakir Hussain on her debut as soloist. Her first experience in the recording studio came the year before Angel Records released In Celebration, a special four-CD box set titled In Celebration to mark her father's birthday. She was travelling with her father at concerts around the world by the age of fourteen. She appeared on the legendary album Chants of India, which was produced by George Harrison at fifteen. She was initially in charge of notation and then of conducting the performers who appeared on the tape under their direction. Following this bad taste, Angel Records' CEO Robin Hughes came to her parents' house to request her to join her, and Shankar signed her first exclusive recording deal with Angel/EMI when she was sixteen.

In 1998, Anoushka was released, followed by Annourag in 2000. Shankar graduated from high school with distinction in 1999 but decided against attending university in favour of touring as a solo artist. Both Shankar and her half-sister Norah Jones were nominated for Grammy awards in 2003, when Anoushka was the youngest nominee in the World Music category for her third album, Live at Carnegie Hall.

Shankar spent three albums of Indian classical music before shifting her attention away from recording and into establishing herself as a solo concert performer outside of her father's orchestra. She appeared in over a hundred countries, playing an average of 50–60 concerts per year. RISE, her first self-produced, self-composed, non-classical album, received her second Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary World Music category in 2005. She became the first Indian to compete at the Grammy Awards in February 2006, delivering RISE's most popular program.

Breathing Under Water was released by Shankar on August 28, 2007, in collaboration with Indian producer, composer, and guitarist Karsh Kale. It's a blend of classical sitar and electronica beats and melodies. Norah Jones, Sting's paternal half-sister, and her father, who performed a sitar duet with her, were among the notable guests on stage.

Shankar was signed as an exclusive artist on record label Deutsche Grammophon in 2011. Shankar's prolific recording and creative period began at this time, during which time she continued to refine the sitar sound and musical concepts she had developed. She was nominated for her third Grammy Award nomination in 2013 for Traveller, an exploration of the shared heritage of flamenco and Indian classical music, which was compiled by Javier Limón and featured artists such as Buika, Pe Habichuela, and Duquende. Shankar formed a specially handpicked group of musicians with whom to perform this cross-genre music, and she has appeared at over a hundred concerts around the world to promote Traveller. Traces of You, her father's tribute album, was released in 2013 and was released several months after his father Ravi Shankar's death. Traces of You, produced by Nitin Sawhney and starring her half-sister Norah Jones as the sole vocal performer, received her fourth Grammy nomination in the World Music category. Shankar's debut Home, her first strictly classical album of Indian Ragas, was released in July 2015. Home was recorded over a week in October 2014 in Shankar's latest, purpose-built home-studio.

Shankar's fourth album with Deutsche Grammophon; the global refugee crisis and the sensation of powerlessness between being able to provide for her newly born second child and the sense of powerlessness to help alleviate the injustice and sadness that the world was seeing on. The publication includes a variety of aspects, from MIA's vocal to veteran British actress Vanessa Redgrave's monologue. The videos also have a strong cinematic presence, lent by film Director Joe Wright's (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement). Land of Gold remixes debuted in the same year with remixes by Mowgli, Karsh Kale, Matt Robertson, Grain, and the East London-based collective Shiva Soundsystem.

Reflections, a 20-year retrospective album that revisits Shankar's best of her cross-cultural back catalogue with Deutsche Grammophon, including several of her previous collaborations with fellow artists and producers, appeared in 2019.

Shankar's Love Letters in 2020 marked a change in Shankar's direction. The co-produced EP is a collection of songs written between 2018 and 2019, as well as on her new record label, Mercury KX. Several guest artists appear on the EP, including singer and co-producer Alev Lenz, twin sister vocal pair Ibeyi, guitarist and cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Brooklyn-based mastering engineer Heba Kadry (Björk, Slowdive), and British audio mastermind Mandy Parnell (The XX).

Shankar regularly collaborates with electronic music producer Gold Panda, percussionist Manu Delago, and the Britten Sinfonia quartet, all of whom appeared, including Shankar, at the 2020 BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall.

Shankar has appeared on recordings by other artists throughout her career, including Sting, Lenny Kravitz, Thievery Corporation, and Nitin Sawhney.

She collaborated with jazz legend Herbie Hancock on his album The Imagine Project in 2010, as well as Pink, India, Chaka Khan, The Chieftains, Wayne Shorter, and Dave Matthews. The project was also shot for a film accompanying the release and capturing him performing with the artists who collaborated on the project.

In the same year, she appeared on MIDIVAL Punditz's track "Rebirth by Indian" fusion group. A guest appearance from Shankar's sitar improvisation was included on the album Area 52 by Rodrigo & Gabriela in 2012. During a performance in Konzerthaus Berlin, Germany, she performed the Raga Piloo with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja; the song was first performed and recorded by Ravi Shankar as a duet with Yehudi Menuhin on the album West Meets East, Volume 2 in 1968.

More recently, she appeared on the track "Ama La" on the Dalai Lama's first music album, Inner World, which was released in July 2020 on his 85th birthday.

Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective's third and final instalment of album trilogy Perfect Vision by Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Tenzin Choegyal performed "Prabhujee" on Sunday, shortly after she appeared on Peradam; she also appeared on Patti Smith's album "Prabhujee," which was released in November 2020.

Shankar was featured on "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" on November 13, 2020 as part of the BBC Radio 2's Allstars' Children in Need charity single. On both the Official UK Singles Sales Chart and the Official UK Singles Download Chart, the single debuted at number 7 on both the Official UK Singles Chart and Number 1 on both the Official UK Singles Sales Chart and the Official UK Singles Download Chart.

Anoushka has continued to tour and perform as a classical sitarist as well as as a soloist supporting her father's compositions with the world's best orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker, MDR Sinfonie or Lucerne Symphony.

Shankar is the sole performer of Ravi Shankar's First and Second Concertos for Sitar and Orchestra after the composer's death, performing multiple times under the guidance of respected conductors such as legendary Zubin Mehta, Jules Buckley, Kristjan Järvi, and Jakob Hrusa. She appeared in January 2009 as the sitar soloist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra premiering her father's Third Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra in London, and in July 2010 she premiered Ravi Shankar's first symphony for sitar and orchestra with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

She has appeared in duets with musicians like violinist Joshua Bell, as well as flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, who has played both sitar and piano.

Shankar took her first steps into scoring with a Bengali lullaby produced for Director Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley, Jude Law, and Tannishtha Chatterjee.

Shankar's move into filmmaking prompted her to film score The British Film Institute's restoration of rare Indian silent Shiraz: A Romance of India (Original 1928, scored in 2017). She appeared on screen at premieres of the film as the 2017 London Film Festival Archive Gala's premiered in 2017 and then appeared at the global film festival We Are One on June 2, 2020.

Victoria & Abdul, a British-American biographical drama starring Stephen Frears, co-wrote and performed on the end-title song "Gain the Ocean" for the Judi Dench-starred British-American biographical drama Victoria & Abdul.

Mira Nair's (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, The Namesake) co-composed the score to Mira Nair's (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, The Namesake) BBC 6-part series A Suitable Boy (2020); based on Vikram Seth's classic book of the same name (Bridget Jones' Diary, War and Peace, Les Misérables) stars Tabu, Tanya Maniktala Maput:

Shankar has also dabbled in acting (Dance Like a Man, 2004) and writing. In 2002, she wrote a biography of her father, Bapi: The Love of My Life, and has written numerous books. She spent three years as a columnist for India's First City Magazine and one year as a weekly columnist for India's second largest newspaper, the Hindustan Times.

Stolen Innocence: A True Story of Human Trafficking in India and Nepal, a 2017 film by filmmaker Chris Davis, Casey Allred and Lindsay Daniels, told the real stories of young women who were escaping from sex slavery in India and Nepal.

Shankar has been invited to appear at benefit concerts around the world throughout her career.

Shankar performed in 2000 with Madonna and Bryan Adams at the Royal Albert Hall in London, a tribute to George Harrison's life and music. "Your Eyes" was the show's first appearance on the program, when she opened the show by playing a solo sitar instrument. She appeared on the sitar on George Harrison's "The Inner Light" with Jeff Lynne. Arpan, her father's book, was a new composition by her father in the tenth century. Eric Clapton played acoustic guitar and a full orchestra of Indian and Western musicians appeared in the program. Ravi Shankar's benefit concert with Harrison, the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, was modeled after the concert.

Patti Labelle, Elton John, Nina Simone, and others appeared for Rock for the Rainforest, the charity concert produced by Sting and Trudie Styler at Carnegie Hall in 2002.

In 2003, Shankar was invited by Richard Gere and Philip Glass to appear in a concert at Avery Fisher Hall in aid of the Healing the Divide: A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation.

After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Shankar and Jethro Tull postponed a concert scheduled for 29 November 2008 in Mumbai. They reorganised the appearance as A Billion Hands Concert, a benefit for victims of the attacks, and held it on December 5th, 2008. "This is how I speak, how I express my rage within myself," Shankar said about this decision, "our entire tour has been changed by these performances, and even though the concert's foundation remains unchanged, we may be saying a lot more."

Shankar helped gather names and signed a letter sent to the Guardian in 2016 in response to a call for action to assist Syrian refugees.

Gemma Arterton, Andrew Scott, Jade Anouka, Cara Theobaold, Florence Welch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Joely Richardso, among other writers, performed a poem in February 2018 as part of Letters Live for Help Refugees.

She embarked on a short tour of Land of Gold in July 2018 to help raise funds for the nonprofit group Help Refugees.

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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 (M.P.C. 103028).
• 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.