Anoushka Shankar’s 20-year career as a
sitar player and composer has explored a wide enough expanse of musical
territory that “Reflections,” a compilation album released last week,
could have gone in any number of different directions.
“As you can imagine, I put a few versions together,” Shankar, a six-time Grammy nominee, says by phone from her home in London.
“Usually,
I really only look at any one particular album at a time when I’m
making it. I’ve never really sat and looked at the journey through all
of my albums to see if I could find a thread through them. It was
difficult because, obviously, you could make very different stories and
moods in a compilation.”
She
made one, she says, that was mellow and meditative, then another that
was upbeat and energetic. “Finally, I just tried to find the right
balance,” she says.
That
balance required that she pay attention to the various aspects of her
career: the intricate, improvisatory Indian classical music taught to
her by her father, world-renowned sitar player and composer Ravi
Shankar; cross-cultural experiments, including journeys into electronica
and flamenco music; and collaborations with vocalists, including her
half-sister Norah Jones.
Shankar
started playing sitar at age 7 — “My parents had a small one made for
me. It was still quite intimidating.” She made her recording debut at 13
and at 15 appeared on her father’s album “Chants of India,” which was
produced by George Harrison. Her debut album under her own name,
“Anoushka,” appeared in 1998, when she was 17.
Being
the daughter of Ravi Shankar certainly opened doors for her, but it
took her own talent and determination to become more than just an echo
of her father’s legacy.
“My
father was a pioneer and a leader in the things he did and the way he
did them,” she says. “But it’s not just that he was the pure classicist
and I’m not, you know? He was a great innovator and experimenter. But if
I were to follow exactly the way he did it, I wouldn’t be finding
anything new to say.”
It didn’t
hurt that, as she grew up in London, Delhi and Los Angeles, Shankar was
a bit of a rave kid. Electronic instruments and dance rhythms began to
make their way into her sound as early as her 2005 album “Rise,” which
she produced herself.
“From
there it kind of
plays across different albums,” she says. “For me, it
felt like, growing up, I had this very sort of intense experience with
Indian classical music and learning and performing it. To be a traveler
in that wild, psychedelic world of dance music felt like the complete
polar opposite. But there were a lot of similarities in what I was
getting out of both kinds of music. So that set me up to have a really
broad range and to have an open mind about music.”
Being taught by her father, she
admits, was an occasionally intense experience. She didn’t always know
that she wanted to follow in his footsteps, but even during periods of
doubt, she continued to practice.
“I
lived with my teacher and he was my father and he practiced every day
so I practiced every day and we practiced every day together,” she says.
She
recalls an interview that George Harrison gave in which he talked about
being a student of Ravi Shankar and about how strict and demanding a
teacher he was. And then he mentioned Anoushka.
“He
said, ‘Yeah, I really feel sorry for her because she can’t escape
him!’” she says with a laugh. “That sums up the beauty and the intensity
at the same time.”
Despite the
popularity of her father’s work, Westerners regard the sitar as an
exotic instrument, and it’s still not widely heard. Shankar is helping
to break down those barriers, but it’s a work in progress.
“What is amazing about the sitar can also end up being difficult for it,” she says.
“Even
though my father had a really successful career before the ’60s, that
kind of insane pop-culture splash that happened was so massive. People
hear the sitar and immediately think, you know, flying carpets and
tie-dyed T-shirts and wafting smoke.
“One
of the things I’m trying to do is still respect the instrument and its
culture but also kind of demystify it — not play it in a context that is
just instrumental and exotic, you know? That feels important to me.”
The violin was one of Bach’s favourite instruments and inspired his most
lyrical outpourings. We know he was greatly influenced by the Italian
masters whose work he discovered during his Weimar years – by the power
of Frescobaldi, the melodic flexibility of Corelli, the sunny grace of
Vivaldi – but he developed his own wonderful artistry in writing music
of polyphonic density for the violin and “playing” with its sound
palette. His deep understanding of the instrument clearly enabled him to
exploit its full potential and to write as well as perform music of the
utmost virtuosity. 
In 1999, after twenty years as cellist of the Kronos Quartet, I chose to
leave the group and began a metamorphosis of sorts in my musical
development as a solo artist. During residencies in Hawaii and San
Francisco, I was able to freely explore the directions my interests were
leading me at this pivotal point in my career. During this time I
continued working with composers. I began to improvise, arrange and
compose music myself, as well as research, produce and present
muti-media and performance arts. I became interested in not only the
visual and conceptual presentation of music but also the sound world my
instrument could inhabit. Increasingly I became fascinated with the
layering of sound and the versatility of the cello in this exploration.
'Metamorphosis' is much of the music that resulted from this phase,
being the soundtrack to the staged musical theatrical production of the
same name. (Joan Jeanrenaud)
Nonesuch Records releases Kronos Quartet’s Music of Vladimir Martynov on
January 10, 2012. The album includes three works written or rescored
for Kronos by the contemporary Russian composer Vladimir Martynov: The Beatitudes (1998, rescored for Kronos, 2006), Schubert–Quintet (Unfinished) (2009), and Der Abschied (2006).
Kronos’ artistic director and founder David Harrington says Martynov’s
music “straddles various points of musical history and time; the music
seems to me to reflect and absorb humanity in such a beautiful way.”
Seven Days Walking is the title of the new album by Ludovico Einaudi,
set to be released on March 15, 2019, three and a half years after
Elements and a triumphal world tour.
Recorded live at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London on 3
October 2014 (The Isle of the Dead) and 14 December 2016 (Symphony No.
1).
Together with the string quartet, the Sonata for Violin and Piano has
been one of the standard works of classical chamber music since the 18th
century. The violinist Elisa van Beek and her piano accompanist Giorgos
Karagiannis show the development of the violin sonata with
contributions by Mozart, Brahms and Bartók. Elisa van Beek was born into
a musical family in Germany. At the age of six she received her first
piano lesson with Birgit Helber at the Music School in Trossingen. She
also took lessons from her father and won first prize at the regional
Jugend Musiziert music competition. At the age of eleven she discovered
her passion for the violin while taking lessons with Rudolf Rampf and
later with Riza Yildiz at the Diapason Music Academy in Karlsruhe. She
went on to study at the Folkwang University of the Arts and the State
Academy of Music in Trossingen. She is currently engaged as a permanent
substitute at the State Theatre in Hanover, Germany.
"Get to hear Hans Zimmer s greatest hits as you ve never heard them
before! Sony Classical releases the double-album The World of Hans
Zimmer A Symphonic Celebration in spring 2019. The album features the
music from the Zimmer-curated World of Hans Zimmer international concert
tour by Semmel Concerts. For The World of Hans Zimmer A Symphonic
Celebration Hans Zimmer has newly arranged his greatest hits and made
them into electrifying concert suites for orchestra, choir and an
impressive list of soloists. Each concert suite features the most
recognisable parts and melodies of a film score in the cohesive form of a
new symphonic work. The album features such legendary scores as The
Dark Knight , The Da Vinci Code , Lion King , Pirates of the Caribbean
and M:i-2 Mission: Impossible 2 . A band of famous soloists and singers
adds to the excitingly new listening experience. Amongst these
accomplished musicians are several of Zimmer s long-time musical
collaborators such as Gavin Greenaway (musical director), Lisa Gerrard,
multi-instrumentalist Pedro Eustache, and renowned opera singer
Valentina Nafornita. The recording took place at the famous traditional
concert hall Wiener Konzerthaus featuring renowned ORF Vienna Radio
Symphony Orchestra and choir Neue Wiener Stimmen conducted by Martin
Gellner in the course of the Hollywood in Vienna festival. The World of Hans Zimmer A Symphonic Celebration also includes concert suites of the
scores of King Arthur , Pearl Harbor , Rush , Madagascar , Spirit , Kung
Fu Panda , The Holiday , Hannibal , Gladiator and Inception . "
Listening to music by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson reminds me
of optical illusions, those little diagrams where you can't believe this
line is really the same length as that line, or you're amazed that the
swirling circle isn't really rotating. Our brains are complex computers
but it doesn't take much to short the circuits. We're constantly
constructing patterns based on context.
Placeless is the first collaboration between Kronos and Iranian singers Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat. Recorded in Oslo’s Kulturkirken Jakob in November 2018, the album features 14 songs composed by Mahsa Vahdat to classical poems by Hafez and Rumi and the works of contemporary Iranian poets Forough Farrokhzad, Mohammad Ibrahim Jafari and Vahdat’s husband Atabak Elyasi. Composers Sahba Aminikia, Aftab Darvishi, Jacob Garchik and Elyasi arranged the songs for string quartet.
Project W began as
Chicago Sinfonietta’s year-long initiative to highlight contemporary,
diverse, women composers through four commissioned works by Clarice
Assad, Reena Esmail, Jennifer Higdon, and Jessie Montgomery culminating
in the recording of the orchestra’s 16th album.
Catalan soprano Núria Rial is a specialist in Renaissance and
Baroque music, particularly in the works of Monteverdi and Handel,
and she is well-versed in European art songs. She attended the
Municipal Conservatory of Barcelona, where she earned diplomas in
voice and piano, and advanced to the City of Basel Music Academy,
where she studied with Kurt Widmer and received the solo vocalist
diploma. In 2003, she received the Helvetia Patria Jeunesse
Foundation Prize from the European Foundation for Culture. Rial has
performed with many period ensembles and chamber orchestras in
repertoire that encompasses Baroque and Classical opera, and the
vocal music of France, Germany, Spain, and her native Catalonia.
She has appeared as a guest artist at many festivals in Europe and
South America, and sung in operatic productions at the Innsbruck
Theatre, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in
Berlin, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and the Grand
Théâtre in Geneva. Rial has recorded with Sony Classical, Deutsche
Harmonia Mundi, Mirare, and Glossa. (Blair Sanderson)
“Beyond the great musical interest that Cavalli offers, his operas are
notable for their richness and modernity, and for the diversity and
complexity of their characters,” says countertenor Philippe Jaroussky.
“Stage directors and opera houses are increasingly keen to stage his
works. His operas are full of fantasy, craziness, humour and emotion.
They offer a variety we don’t find in the opera seria of the 18th century.”
Anoushka Shankar’s 20-year career as a
sitar player and composer has explored a wide enough expanse of musical
territory that “Reflections,” a compilation album released last week,
could have gone in any number of different directions.
