Anoushka Shankar
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Grammy nominations
i) Before turning twenty she made three classical sitar records for Angel/EMI under the guidance of her father, and received her first Grammy® nomination, thereby becoming the first Indian female and youngest-ever nominee in the World Music category. (The name of the album and year of nomination are closely guarded state scerets. Anoushka’s own site—from which this extract has been taken—is silent about it. Therefore, so is the entire www/ Internet.)
ii) Rise (2005)
iii) 2015: Anoushka was nominated for her album Traces of You in the Best World Music Album categoryTraces of You is Anoushka's seventh album for which she has worked with London-based British-Indian producer Nitin Sawhney to interweave Indian and electronic music influence. Her half-sister Norah Jones has also provided vocals for the album on the track 'The Sun Won't Set'..
Biography
Anoushka Shankar, born 1982, is the daughter of India’s best known classical musician ever, Pandit Ravi Shankar.
She lives in London with her husband and son
Education
Anoushka Shankar studied exclusively from the age of nine under her father and guru, Ravi Shankar.
Early Career
In her twenties, after establishing herself as one of the foremost classical sitarists on the world’s stage, she began thriving as a composer, exploring fertile ground in the crossover between Indian music and a variety of genres including flamenco, jazz, electronica and Western classical music.
Among various accolades she has been thrice nominated for a Grammy® Award and was the youngest, and first female, recipient of a House of Commons Shield from the British House of Parliament in 1999. As a classical sitarist Anoushka Shankar debuted professionally at the age of thirteen and has performed in prestigious venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall (over a dozen times), and championed her father’s orchestral works with the world’s leading orchestras under conductors such as Zubin Mehta.
In 2011 Anoushka signed to the prestigious classical music label Deutsche Grammophon, and released her sixth album, Traveller, a critically hailed exploration of Indian classical music and Spanish flamenco. This was the third in a series of breakthrough experimental albums from Anoushka, following 2005’s self-produced and Grammy®-nominated Rise, and 2007’s Breathing Under Water, a collaborative venture between Anoushka and multi-instrumentalist and composer Karsh Kale.
In support of Traveller, Anoushka created an ensemble of flamenco and Indian musicians and went on tour, doing over ninety concerts presenting this new music across multiple continents. Traveller earned her a third Grammy® nomination and also a Songlines Best Artist award.
In 2013, Anoushka released Traces of You, having enlisted the help of multi-award-winning musician Nitin Sawhney to produce her music. As good friends they worked closely together, coaxing out some of the most intimate and daring music Anoushka had released by then. The music exists in an undefinable space between genres, always with the Indian music Anoushka loves so dearly at its roots. Traces of You features Anoushka’s half-sister Norah Jones as the sole vocalist on several songs and showcases Anoushka’s ever increasing versatility and lyricism on the sitar.
Over the years Anoushka s maintained creative careers outside of music: in 2002 she authored the book Bapi: The Love of My Life, a biographical portrait of her father, and she has served as regular columnist for New Delhi’s First City magazine and the Hindustan Times. She also earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination from India’s National Film Awards for her role in Dance Like a Man in 2004.
