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About Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar, the legendary sitarist and composer, is India’s most esteemed musical Ambassador and a singular phenomenon in the Classical music worlds of East and West. As a performer, composer, teacher and writer, he has done more for Indian music than any other musician. He is well-known for his pioneering work in bringing Indian music to the West. This, however, he did only after long years of dedicated study under his illustrious guru, Baba Allaudin Khan, and after making a name for himself in India.

Always ahead of his time, Ravi Shankar has written two concertos for sitar and orchestra, violin-sitar compositions for Yehudi Menuhin and himself, music for flute virtuoso Jean Pierre Rampal, music for Hosan Yamamoto, master of the Shakuhachi and Musumi Miyashita - Koto virtuoso, and collaborated with Phillip Glass (Passages). George Harrison produced and participated in two record albums, Shankar Family & Friends and Festival of India composed by Ravi Shankar. He has composed extensively for films and ballets in India, Canada, Europe and the United States, including Charly, Gandhi and Apu Trilogy. Ravi Shankar is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a member of the United Nations International Rostrum of composers. He has received many awards and honors from his own country and from all over the world, including 14 doctorates, the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan, Desikottam, the Magsaysay Award from Manila, two Grammys, the Fukuoka grand Prize from Japan, the Crystal award from Davos, with the title ‘Global Ambassador’, to name just a few.  In 1986 he was nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of Parliament. His recording Tana Mana, released on the private Music label in 1987, brought Mr. Shankar’s music into the “New Age” with its unique method of combining traditional instruments with electronics.

In the period of the awakening of the younger generation in the mid 1960s, Ravi Shankar gave three memorable concerts - Monterey Pop Festival, Concert for Bangladesh and the Woodstock Festival. Mr. Shankar has several disciples and many of them are now very successful concert artists and composers.

The love and respect he commands both in India and in the West is unique in the annals of the history of music. In 1989, this remarkable musician celebrated his 50th year of concertizing, and the city of Birmingham Touring Opera Company commissioned him to do a music theater piece (Ghanashyam - a broken branch) which created history on the British arts scene.  
“Ravi Shankar has brought me a precious gift and through him I have added a new dimension to my experience of music. To me, his genius and his humanity can only be compared to that of Mozart’s.”  -  Yehudi Menuhin

“Ravi Shankar is the Godfather of World Music.” - George Harrison 

About Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka Shankar has shown herself to be a unique artist with tremendous talent and understanding of the great musical tradition of India. She is the only artist in the world to be trained completely by her father, the legendary sitar virtuoso and composer, Ravi Shankar. She has been playing and studying the sitar with him since she was nine, and at age thirteen she made her performing debut in New Delhi, India. That same year, Anoushka entered the recording studio for the first time to play on her father’s recording, In Celebration. Shortly thereafter she signed an exclusive record contract with Angel/EMI. In the autumn of 1998 her first solo recording, Anoushka, was released to tremendous critical acclaim.

Anoushka spent her formative years in London, where she was born in 1981. By the time she was seven she was also living partly in New Delhi, India, where she still spends half the year performing and helping to take care of the Ravi Shankar Centre.

Anoushka now spends much of the year giving solo performances in Europe, America and Asia, and continues touring the world with her father’s ensemble. Anoushka is also championing her father’s Concerto No. 1 for Sitar and Orchestra. After a year’s sabbatical in 2004, Anoushka has returned to the concert stage and has also grown as a composer. She scored the music for a short film titled Ancient Marks, and released her fourth solo album, Rise, which features several of her new compositions, played by her and many notable instrumentalists from India and the West. Her newest recording, Breathing Under Water, was released in August 2007.