World Music presents Ravi Shankar’s Festival of India featuring Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar & Friends on Sunday, October 2, 7:30 pm at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Ave., Boston.  Tickets are $100 (golden circle), $50, $40 and $30. For tickets and information call World Music (617) 876-4275, SymphonyCharge (888) 266-1200 or buy online at www.WorldMusic.org.
 
Legendary virtuoso sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar brings an ensemble of folk musicians and singers from India to celebrate the best of Indian classical music. Shankar will conduct and lead the group on sitar and will be joined by his daughter Anoushka and selected musicians on Indian violin, folk drums, wind instruments and vocals.
 
Ravi Shankar is the leading master of the sitar, a four-foot-long instrument with 20 strings that are plucked.  One of the world’s most ornate and complex instruments, the sitar has many tuning pegs and a choir of strings that vibrate according to the notes being plucked.  Shankar has built a reputation as an extroverted, speed-demon sitarist, but his improvisations also show a gentle intricacy that transcends the bounds of cultural and musical style.  With an instrumental capacity ranging from profound delicacy to technical flamboyance, he reveals his prowess with music that is likely to be almost entirely improvised.  Like American jazz, Indian classical music is 90% improvised within a basic melodic framework or raga.
 
Ravi Shankar was born Robindra Shankar in Benares, India in 1920.  In 1930, he moved to Paris where he soon joined his brother in an Indian dance troupe.  Indian dance and music was fairly unknown in the West, and for eight years the troupe was celebrated as an exotic phenomenon.  In 1935, Ustad Allauddin Khan, an extraordinary virtuoso musician commonly recognized as the founder of modern Hindustani classical music, joined the troupe for a year.  “Baba” Allauddin Khan’s playing captivated Shankar, and when the troupe returned to India in 1938, he became Khan’s disciple.  For nearly seven years, he studied sitar according to the old guru-shishya approach, characterized by disciplined learning in an isolated environment and a religious-like reverence for the guru.
 
Known as Ravi Shankar, he gradually gained a reputation as one of the leading performers in India and was increasingly interested in taking his music abroad.  With a strong desire to create awareness of and appreciation for Indian music around the world, he toured the USSR, Japan, Europe and America in the mid and late 1950s.  Ever since, he has been a world-renowned performer, while still making a point of returning to India every year. 
 
There are two separate sides to Ravi Shankar as a musician.  As a classical sitar performer, he has always been a traditional purist, but as a composer, he has sought to push boundaries.  Even before meeting George Harrison, he was working with and influencing musicians in different musical spheres, including jazz, western classical and folk.  After his work with Harrison in 1966, Indian music and culture were suddenly given maximum exposure in the West, and Shankar leaped into the popular consciousness. His reputation transformed from a highly respected classical musician to a hippie idol, which proved to be a mixed blessing.  Although he took to this new level of celebrity enthusiastically, he objected to some of the hippies’ drug use and misrepresentation of India.  After performing at Woodstock in 1969, he gave up appearances at pop festivals.  Although never relinquishing his international identity, he felt it necessary to temporarily reduce his profile in the West and focus more on India. As India’s unofficial cultural ambassador, Ravi Shankar has an immense list of achievements.  He is a prolific composer, and in addition to his numerous ragas and talas, he has composed two Concertos for Sitar and Orchestra, the first commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and premiered under André Previn and the other commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1980.  He has also composed extensively for ballets and his film scores include “Gandhi” and Satayajit Ray’s “Trilogy.” 

  Ravi Shankar’s extensive discography of over 60 albums continues to grow, and in 1996 Angel Records released In Celebration, a lavishly documented four-CD retrospective of his greatest recordings, in honor of his 75th birthday.  He is also the author of three books–My Music, My Life (in English), Rag Anurag (in Bengali) and Raga Mala (English) –the latest of which is an autobiography that was released in fall 1999. In 2002, Ravi received his third Grammy Award for Full Circle/Live at Carnegie Hall 2000 (2001) in the world music category and was also subject of a new DVD, Ravi Shankar in Portrait, a definitive documentary filmed over two years covering seven decades of his life. In 2003, he received the ISPA Distinguished Artist Award, given the individuals who have made an outstanding contribution of talent, artistry, dedication and service to the world of performing arts.
 
Born in London, Anoushka Shankar grew up in California and India, where she spends part of every winter performing with her father and visiting her family. Besides being a sitar virtuoso, she is a gifted classical pianist with a wide range of interests. However, her devotion to the sitar and her father's guidance is unmistakable, with a discipline that has led her into an already extraordinary performing career. At age 13 she made her performing debut in New Delhi, India, and that same year entered the recording studio for the first time to play on her father's recording, In Celebration. Two years later she helped as conductor with her father and George Harrison on the 1997 Angel release, Chants of India. In fall 1998, Shankar released her debut solo album, Anoushka, on Angel/EMI Classics, to tremendous critical acclaim. Her second album, Anourag, was released in August 2000 and she also performed with her father on the Grammy Award-winning recording, Full Circle/Live at Carnegie Hall 2000, released in 2001. Anoushka Shankar has recently recorded her fourth solo album, Rise, which features several of her new compositions and many notable musicians around the world. It is due for release in September 2005.
 
Anoushka Shankar has traveled the world for many years, performing solo and with her father's ensemble, receiving worldwide acclaim. She has also shared the stage with Sting, Madonna, Nina Simone, Angelique Kidjo, Herbie Hancock, Elton John, Peter Gabriel, James Taylor, among many others. In 1998, the British Parliament presented her with a House of Commons Shield in recognition for her artistry and musicianship. At age 17, she was the youngest as well as the sole female recipient of this high honor. In 1997, Shankar accompanied her father in a performance of his "Concerto No. 1 for Sitar and Orchestra" with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. In February 2000, Shankar became the first woman to perform at the Ramakrishna Centre in Calcutta. In 2001, she made her conducting debut at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi with a 22-member orchestra, performing a new and intricate composition by her father titled “Kalyan.” In August 2002, Anoushka released her first book, Bapi, The Love of My Life. The pictorial biography is a rich tribute to her father’s life, and in November 2002, she conducted a new Ravi Shankar composition at the Concert for George in honor of the late George Harrison at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which was released on CD in 2003. She also made her film debut in February 2003 in Dance Like a Man, based on the play by Mahesh Dattani, for which she was nominated for best supporting actress at the National Film Awards (India). She also recently scored the music for Ethan Boehme’s short film, Ancient Marks, based on still photography of tribal tattooing and scarifications around the world. In October 2004, she was featured in Time magazine’s “Asia’s Heroes: The Top 20 Under 40” and named by San Diego Magazine as one of the 50 people to watch in 2005.

World Music is funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency which also receives support from the National Endowment of the Arts.

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