CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Ravi Shankar
and Anoushka Shankar

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

Ravi Shankar, Sitar
Anoushka Shankar, Sitar

The legendary sitar virtuoso, whose playing has inspired and thrilled audiences for generations, performs with his daughter Anoushka, a standard-bearer for the next generation.

Program Notes:

Jeff Tamarkin on
Ravi and Anoushka Shankar

Few musicians in history have made such a phenomenal impact that they alone have come to symbolize a nation’s artistic contribution. But mention Indian music to anyone the world over and the name Ravi Shankar immediately comes to mind. For more than 70 years—he holds the Guinness record for the longest international career—Ravi Shankar has served as an ambassador of Indian culture, bringing the exotic, complex, and spiritual sound of the Indian raga to the West. It was Shankar who, during the 1960s, famously tutored the young George Harrison (who called Shankar “the godfather of world music”) and who held audiences rapt at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival and at Woodstock. He has been a lifelong experimenter and seeker, qualities that he has now passed along to his youngest daughter, Anoushka Shankar. Although just 26 years old, Anoushka is already a sitar prodigy in her own right, and over the course of five albums she has presented a body of work that proudly carries on the family tradition while taking the music to exciting new places. On her latest album, Breathing under Water, which features guests such as Sting and Norah Jones (Anoushka’s half-sister), Anoushka collaborates with the dynamic multi-instrumentalist Karsh Kale on a set of songs that effortlessly fuse the traditions of Indian music with cutting-edge electronic sounds, rock, and more to create something wholly original. When these two generations of Shankars share the stage at Carnegie Hall, there’s no telling what might happen—except that spectacular music will be made.

Veteran music journalist Jeff Tamarkin is the Associate Editor of JazzTimes magazine.

Ravi Shankar, Sitar
Legendary virtuoso sitarist, composer, teacher, and writer Ravi Shankar is India’s most esteemed musical ambassador and a singular phenomenon whose artistry crosses all cultural and musical boundaries. A student of the illustrious guru “Baba” Ustad Allaudin Khan, Mr. Shankar was already one of the brightest stars in India before coming to international attention in the 1960s. Since then, he has been the foremost pioneer in disseminating India’s rich classical music tradition to the West.

The youngest son of a Bengali family, Ravi Shankar was born in 1920 in Varansi (Benares), the holiest of Indian cities. At the age of 10, he accompanied elder brother Uday Shankar and his company of dancers and musicians to Paris, where the younger Shankar attended school. He spent several years in the West absorbing different kinds of music before returning to India in 1938 to begin his career. He combined his concert performances with his work for All India Radio (1949–56) where he established the National Chamber Orchestra. As word of his virtuosity spread throughout India, then Europe, Asia, and the US, Mr. Shankar embarked on the most extraordinary international careers in the history of contemporary music.

A prolific and sought-after composer, Ravi Shankar has written numerous works for Western collaborations, in addition to his many traditional ragas and talas. His Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra was commissioned and premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra under André Previn. A second sitar concerto, Raga-Mala (A Garland of Ragas), was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta in 1980. Shankar’s chamber works for sitar and other instruments includes violin-sitar compositions for the distinguished violinist Yehudi Menuhin and himself, and works for flute virtuoso Jean-Pierre Rampal, shakuhachi master Hosan Yamamoto, and koto virtuoso Musumi Miyashita. Shankar has enjoyed a close relationship with Philip Glass, collaborating with the composer on the 1990 album Passages and the recent multi-artist work Orion, which opened the 2004 Cultural Olympiad in Greece.

Ravi Shankar has composed extensively for film and ballet. His scores for Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed Apu trilogy raised film music to a new standard of excellence, and he was nominated for both a Grammy and Oscar for his original score to Gandhi, the Academy Award–winning classic by Sir Richard Attenborough. He made history on both the British and Indian cultural scenes with the ballet Ghanashyam, which he wrote, composed, and choreographed.

Ravi Shankar is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Presidential Padma Vibhushan Award (1980) and the Award of Deshikottam, given by Vishawa Bharati and presented in December 1982 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of the Arts and Letters and recipient of 12 honorary doctorates. In 1986, he became a member of the Rajya Sabha, India’s Upper House of Parliament. He is a Fellow of the Sangeet Natak Academy and Founder President of The Research Institute for Music and the Performing Arts.

In 1999, the government of India honored Ravi Shankar by awarding him its highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, or Jewel of India. In 2000, Mr. Shankar received France’s highest civilian award, the Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur. In March 2001, the British High Commissioner and Lady Young awarded Ravi Shankar the Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Ravi Shankar’s extensive discography of more than 60 albums includes Angel Records’s 1996 release In Celebration, a lavishly documented, four-CD retrospective of his greatest recordings issued in honor of his 75th birthday, and the 2001 Angel release Full Circle, Carnegie Hall 2000, Mr. Shankar’s first live-concert recording in nearly two decades, which received a Grammy Award for Best World Music Record. Angel/EMI continues to release Mr. Shankar’s albums, many of which were previously unavailable on CD.

Mr. Shankar continues to tour each season all over the world. He divides his time between India and the US, with regular visits to Europe and the Far East. He is the author of three books: My Music, My Life (in English), Rag Anurag (in Bengali), and Raga Mala, (English), an autobiography that was released in 1999.

Ravi Shankar has been named the “Godfather of World Music” by George Harrison and been given the title “Global Ambassador” by the World Economic Forum. However, there may be no greater tribute paid to this remarkable musician than the words of his colleague Yehudi Menuhin: “Ravi Shankar has brought me a precious gift and through him I have added a new dimension to my experience of music. To me, his genius and his humanity can only be compared to that of Mozart’s.”

Anoushka Shankar, Sitar
For Anoushka Shankar, there is legacy and then there is destiny. She is equally respectful of both, but bound to neither. Her ever-growing audience cannot help but acknowledge the familial roots of the young woman coaxing spellbinding spiritual sounds from her sitar, but neither can they deny that she is an innovator in her own right. Her name may have brought her to the stage for the first time as a young girl, but it is her talent and vision that have kept her there.

Schooled in the Indian classical music tradition by the greatest teacher any student could hope to have, maestro and father Ravi Shankar, Anoushka had already dazzled thousands with her accomplished musicianship by the time she had reached her teens. “The younger Shankar revealed herself to be a remarkably promising sitarist,” said Time Out New York magazine of the 16-year-old Anoushka in 1997, while a few years later Dubai’s Gulf News Panorama noted, “She has accomplished far more than many musicians would do in a lifetime.”

Anoushka made her recording debut at 13, appearing on the album In Celebration, a tribute to the works of Ravi Shankar. Two years later she made her debut as a conductor on her father’s Chants Of India album produced by close family friend, George Harrison.

Anoushka’s 1998 solo debut, Anoushka, established the younger Shankar as something of a prodigy. “That album is a lasting testament to my father’s style and the beauty of it,” she says. That same year, the British Parliament awarded Anoushka with a House of Commons Shield, making her both the youngest and the first female recipient of that high honor.

Anourag (2000), Anoushka’s sophomore release, expanded upon and refined what she had offered on her debut, while 2001’s Live at Carnegie Hall truly brought Anoushka into the international spotlight, garnering her first Grammy nomination.

Although she did not release any new recordings under her own name for the next four years, Anoushka was by no means idle. In 2002 at the historic Concert for George, a tribute to the late George Harrison in London, she conducted a new composition of her father’s, Arpan, which featured a guitar solo by Eric Clapton. Anoushka also performed Harrison’s “The Inner Light” that evening.

That same year saw the release of Anoushka’s book Bapi: The Love of my Life, an intimate biographical portrait of her father’s exceptional journey, as well as a BBC-produced telecast documentary, Anoushka Shankar: Sitar Trek, a 30-minute glimpse of life on the road with the emerging queen of the sitar.

In 2004, Anoushka earned a best supporting actress nomination from India’s National Film Awards for her debut role in Dance Like a Man, a film by the Delhi-based director Pamela Rooks. Also in 2004, leaving no doubt that Anoushka’s impact was being felt around the world, she was chosen as one of 20 Asian Heroes by the Asia edition of Time magazine.

The year 2005 brought a return to the recording studio and the release of her fourth and most ambitious album, Rise (Angel Records). Previously, Anoushka had recorded and performed primarily as a soloist, interpreting the music of her father. Rise marked a breakthrough for Anoushka, who composed, produced, and arranged the album. For the first time she performed with a handpicked ensemble comprised of several other brilliant musicians, elevating her music to a new level. “I felt like I was rising into that,” she says. “Rise signified growth. It was a step up for me. Not even up, just more into my own.”

When Rise arrived, it marked a radical departure for Anoushka. Although she still loves performing in the Indian classical realm and continues to work closely with her father, Rise was all about Anoushka finding her own musical voice. On the album she fused East and West using both acoustic and electric instrumentation to take her music someplace altogether new. It received glowing reviews throughout the world and gave Anoushka another Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary World Music category. Anoushka also became the first Indian to play at the Grammy Awards when she performed a piece from the CD at the pre-telecast ceremony in February 2006. In August 2007 Anoushka’s fifth record, Breathing under Water, was released to critical acclaim. The album stands as a career breakthrough for Anoushka, who partnered with composer and producer Karsh Kale. Anoushka expanded her talents as an electronic producer, pianist, composer, and lyricist with Breathing under Water. The album is carefully constructed and composed, boasting some of the finest guest artists on the order of her father, Ravi Shankar, who created the nucleus of two climatic pieces for the album, plus her good friend Sting and her sister, Norah Jones, as well as some of the finest artists around today.

Anoushka toured in select US cities in the wake of the release of Breathing under Water, working with a band and expanding on the concepts she had brought to the album. “Very freeing,” Anoushka says. “I feel like there are so many things I’m starting to do now creatively. Seeing people connect to the middle ground that my music now exists in, it’s really inspiring me. I’m thinking in alternate ways.

Those who witnessed Anoushka’s own rise throughout the years could not have been too surprised to see how far she had come in so short a time. Born June 9, 1981, in London, Anoushka recalls that it was actually her mother, Sukanya Shankar, who encouraged her to train on the complicated Indian stringed instrument that Anoushka’s father had made world-famous. She first sat down with a sitar, custom-made to accommodate a child’s hands, when she was only eight.

Further is the only direction Anoushka Shankar knows. “At the end of the day,” she says, “you’ve got to be making music because you love it and because it’s honest.”
Spoken like a true Shankar.