Grammy-nominated sitarist Anoushka Shankar is returning to India for the first time since the pandemic - this time with new sounds, fresh collaborations and a performance to honour her father
Anoushka Shankar
My last India tour was just before the pandemic broke out in February 2020, and this will be the first time I am coming back since,” says an excited Anoushka Shankar during a video call from London. The Grammy-nominated composer—she got her eighth nomination last week for Udhero Na—and sitarist, is set to return to India with a three-city tour in Mumbai, Bengaluru and New Delhi in the first week of December.
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The tour will see her perform The Anoushka Shankar Project. The first half of the evening will see Shankar joined by British electronic musician Gold Panda. This will be followed by a quintet of musicians comprising clarinettist Arun Ghosh, Carnatic percussionist Pirashanna Thevarajah, drummer Sarathy Korwar and upright bassist Tom Farmer, who will accompany her for an inventive exploration of selected works from her own repertoire, including the recently released digital album Between Us. “I suppose the primary desire was to come back and perform,” she shares, adding, “we hadn’t been able to come back and do my father’s [Pandit Ravi Shankar] centenary [celebrated in April 7, 2020] performances like we were supposed to.” While she won’t be replicating what they set out to do then, the tour will see her touch on it. “I will be playing a piece of music that I have never played in India before, which is a collaboration with electronic artist Gold Panda—we basically used conversations and samples from my father’s recordings and based music on that. It’s like I am looking back at that and reinterpreting my father’s works, with an electronic context. It’s unusual.”
Her tour will also feature an impressionable first i.e., the world premiere and presentation of the reimagined version of In Jyoti’s Name from her 2013 album, Traces of you, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Delhi gang-rape of 23-year-old Jyoti Singh Pandey. Ask her how playing in India is different from playing internationally, and Shankar says that the differences have been lessening. “People are more and more global now. Maybe, it’s me as a performer as well. I have got better at focusing on the music and what I am playing, rather than focusing on who the people are. But, there is something about playing in India. There is this feeling of homecoming, but also also of people welcoming me home.”
WHAT: The Anoushka Shankar Project India Tour 2022
WHEN: December 16, 8 PM
WHERE: Shanmukhananda Hall, Sion
PRICE: Rs 750 onwards
TO BOOK: bookmyshow.com
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