Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka Hemangini Shankar (born 9 June 1981) is a British-American sitar player and musician, as well as occasional writer and actor.

She performs across multiple genres and styles—classical and contemporary, acoustic and electronic.

Through her father, she is also the half-sister of American singer Norah Jones (born Geetali Norah Shankar), and Shubhendra "Shubho" Shankar, who died in 1992.

As a teenager, Shankar lived in Encinitas, California, and attended San Dieguito High School Academy.

She gave her first public sitar performance on 27 February 1995 at the age of 13, at Siri Fort in New Delhi as part of her father's 75th birthday celebration concert.

For this solo debut, she was accompanied by tabla maestro Zakir Hussain.

Her first experience in the recording studio came that same year when Angel Records released a special four-CD box set called In Celebration, to mark her father's birthday.

By the age of fourteen, she was accompanying her father at concerts around the world.

At fifteen, she assisted her father on the landmark album Chants of India, produced by George Harrison.

Under both their guidance, she was in charge of notation and eventually of conducting the performers who took part in the recording.

After this experience, the heads of Angel Records came to her parents' home to ask to sign her, and Shankar signed her first exclusive recording contract with Angel/EMI when she was sixteen.

In addition to releasing seven solo studio albums beginning with Anoushka (1998), she has also worked alongside a wide variety of musicians, including Karsh Kale on the full-length collaboration Breathing Under Water (2007) and her father Ravi Shankar.

She has received nine Grammy Awards nominations and was the first musician of Indian origin to perform live and to serve as a presenter at the ceremony.

She was the youngest and first woman to receive a British House of Commons Shield.

Shankar was born in London and her childhood was divided between London and Delhi.

She is the daughter of Sukanya Shankar and Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who was 61 when she was born.

She released her first album, Anoushka, in 1998, followed by Anourag in 2000.

A 1999 honours graduate and homecoming queen, she pursued a career in music rather than attending college.

Shankar began training on the sitar with one of her father's disciples, Gaurav Mazumdar, at the age of eight.

As part of her training, she began accompanying her father on the tanpura at his performances from the age of ten.

In 1999 Shankar graduated from high school with honours, but decided against 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 Shankar became the youngest nominee in the World Music category for her third album, Live at Carnegie Hall.

Having released three albums of Indian classical music, Shankar took several years away from recording and focused her energy on establishing herself as a solo concert performer outside of her father's ensemble.

In that time, she toured worldwide, playing an average of 50–60 concerts per year.

2005 brought the release of her fourth album, RISE, her first self-produced, self-composed, non-classical album, earning her another Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary World Music category.

In February 2006 she became the first Indian to play at the Grammy Awards, playing material from RISE.

Shankar, in collaboration with Indian producer, composer and musician Karsh Kale, released Breathing Under Water on 28 August 2007.

It is a mix of classical sitar and electronica beats and melodies.

Notable guest vocals included her half-sister Norah Jones, Sting, and her father, who performed a sitar duet with her.

In 2011 Shankar signed with record label Deutsche Grammophon as an exclusive artist.

This marked the beginning of a prolific recording and creative period for Shankar, during which time she continued to refine the sitar sound and musical ideas she had become known for.

She earned a third Grammy Award nomination in 2013 for Traveller, an exploration of the shared history between flamenco and Indian classical music, which was produced by Javier Limón and featured artists such as Buika, Pepe Habichuela and Duquende.

As Shankar had begun to do with RISE, she created a specially handpicked ensemble of musicians with whom to perform this cross-genre music, and played over a hundred concerts worldwide in support of Traveller.

In 2013 she released a personal album called Traces of You, which was released several months after the passing of her father.

Produced by Nitin Sawhney, and featuring her half-sister Norah Jones as the sole vocal performer, Traces of You earned Shankar a fourth Grammy nomination in the World Music category.

Self-composed and produced, Home was recorded over a week in October 2014 in Shankar's new, purpose-built home-studio.

In July 2015 Shankar released Home, her first purely classical album of Indian ragas.

Following Home, Shankar released Land of Gold (2016) – her fourth album with Deutsche Grammophon.

The release featured different types of contributions – from the vocal of MIA and Alev Lenz, to the monologue of "Remain the Sea" by veteran British actress Vanessa Redgrave.

There is also a strong cinematic influence in the videos, lent by the production of film director Joe Wright.