Performance

When Wednesday, 12 October 2016
Where National Concert Hall, Dublin, Main Auditorium
Presented by Waltons New School of Music
Supported by RTÉ lyric fm

Anoushka Shankar Group

Anoushka Shankar • Sitar
Sanjeev Shankar • Shehnai
Manu Delago • Hang Drums & Percussion
Tom Farmer • Double Bass & Keyboards

Anoushka was interviewed for TG4’s Imeall arts programme on the day of her visit here.

We were honoured to welcome Anoushka Shankar and her group to Dublin for the first time.

Anoushka Shankar is one of the leading figures in world music today. She is deeply rooted in Indian classical music, having studied exclusively with her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar, from the age of nine. Thriving as a composer, she has explored fertile ground in the crossover between Indian music and a variety of genres, including flamenco, electronica, jazz and Western classical music. However, the ancient Indian classical form that was handed down from her father is always a central current running through her work.

Anoushka and her stellar group of musicians performed music from her acclaimed Land of Gold album (Deutsche Grammophon, 2016), her heartfelt response to the trauma and injustice being experienced by refugees and victims of war. Offering an uplifting message of hope for dark times, its music was inspired by recent news images of people fleeing civil war, oppression, poverty and unbearable hardship.

‘No one embodies the spirit of innovation and experimentation more evidently than Anoushka Shankar.’
– Nitin Sawhney

‘I am waiting for the time when I will be called Anoushka’s father. Anoushka has indeed a rare talent…there is something spiritual in the way she plays…she feels the music and gives in to it.’
– Ravi Shankar

‘Most people are musicians simply because they play a certain instrument; when they play that instrument, the music appears. But Ravi, to me, he is the music; it just happens to be that he plays the sitar. And it’s like that with Anoushka. She has that quality. She is the music.’
– George Harrison

Audience Comments

‘Absolutely brilliant and transcendental!’
– D. Bhamidipati

‘The performance, the music and the musicianship were sublime.
Wonderfully warm and accessible performers. I loved it!’
– J. Brophy

‘Anoushka Shankar is a world class musician grounded in the Indian classical tradition but with a reputation of pushing the boundaries of her instrument and music while working in collaboration with other music traditions. It was clear that this was music that would evolve on the night and where each of the musicians was totally engaged in their music and the performance. A unique experience in the presence of master musicians taking risks and passionate about their music.’
– D. Cunningham

‘The concert was a sublime fusion of classical Indian and contemporary musical styles and ideas. The performers were obviously of a world-class quality, playing not only within great intelligence and musical sophistication, with also with passion and joy. Uplifting and inspiring.’
– K. Owens

‘Mesmerising. The lighting focused on every variation of mood and tune, the set-up on stage gave us the opportunity to watch each musician with no effort, and the sound was crystal clear. Anoushka Shankar was the indisputable, humble, elegant and talented queen of this fantastic group of musicians. Not a single note was missed, and the music powerfully conferred the dramatic plight of refugees. Just immensely uplifting.’
– D. Quaresima

Anoushka Shankar

‘No one embodies the spirit of innovation and experimentation more evidently than Anoushka Shankar.’
– Nitin Sawhney

‘I am waiting for the time when I will be called Anoushka’s father. Anoushka has indeed a rare talent…there is something spiritual in the way she plays…she feels the music and gives in to it.’
– Ravi Shankar

‘Most people are musicians simply because they play a certain instrument; when they play that instrument, the music appears. But Ravi, to me, he is the music; it just happens to be that he plays the sitar. And it’s like that with Anoushka. She has that quality. She is the music.’
– George Harrison

Anoushka Shankar made her professional debut as a classical sitarist at the age of thirteen. By the age of twenty, she had made three classical recordings for EMI/Angel and received her first Grammy Award nomination, becoming the first Indian woman and youngest ever nominee in the World Music category. In 2005, Anoushka released her self-produced breakthrough album Rise, which earned her a second Grammy nomination.

In 2011 Anoushka signed to Deutsche Grammophon, heralding a fertile creative period that was rewarded with three further consecutive Grammy Award nominations. Traveller (2011, produced by Javier Limon) was a critically-acclaimed exploration of Indian classical music and Spanish flamenco. This was followed by Traces of You (2013, produced by Nitin Sawhney and featuring Anoushka’s half-sister Norah Jones). The album concept is based on the idea that every experience leaves an indelible mark, or ‘trace’, and Anoushka drew on her personal relationships and multicultural life to trace a journey of love, change and loss. (Having lost her father during the process of recording, it was inevitable that this became the central focus of the work.) For her next album, Home (2015), Anoushka returned to her roots with a purely Indian classical album that showcases the meditative and virtuosic qualities of the Indian raga and pays homage to the teachings of her father. Her most recent album, Land of Gold (2016), her response to the humanitarian trauma of displaced people fleeing conflict and poverty, was released in March, followed by tours of North America (April 2016), Europe (summer and autumn 2016), and India (winter 2016).

As an international solo artist, Anoushka has performed in a range of distinguished venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, Sydney Opera House, Vienna Konzerthaus, Salle Pleyel, the Royal Festival Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Palais des Beaux-Arts and KKL Concert Hall Luzern. Her festival appearances include the Verbier Festival, the Prague Spring Festival, Boom Festival, the BBC Proms and WOMAD.

Anoushka has also championed her father’s four sitar concertos with some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, under the leadership of conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Kristjan Järvi and Jakob Hrusa.

Through her collaborative approach as a composer, Anoushka has encouraged cross-cultural dialogue while demonstrating the versatility of the sitar across several musical genres. As a result, she has worked with a wide range of international artists, including Joshua Bell, Herbie Hancock, Sting, M.I.A, Pepe Habichuela, Karsh Kale and Rodrigo y Gabriela.

Recent highlights include curating a Tagore Festival at the Globe Theatre in London, dedicated to the legendary Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore, and a large-scale Zeitinsel at Konzerthaus Dortmund, where she was given a carte blanche to present four full-length programmes reflecting different aspects of her artistic life.

Anoushka’s artistic output increasingly seeks to reflect her impassioned support of women’s rights and social justice. In 2011, in response to the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey in Delhi, Shankar threw her weight behind the campaign One Billion Rising on change.org. To support the campaign, she released a video in which she demanded an end to crimes against women and revealed she had been sexually abused for many years as a child. Following this, she was invited to take part in a special panel on violence against women at the annual Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi (2013). Other recent projects include hosting a radio show about gender quality to promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and coordinating a call-to-action to the UK government in response to the current European refugee crisis, which was signed by more than 100 leading British cultural figures and published in a full-page advertisement in the Guardian newspaper in September 2015.

Selected YouTube Videos