Latest news with #AnoushkaShankar
Indian Express
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Chapter III We Return to Light review: Where music dances with light
It was in 2023 that sitar player Anoushka Shankar decided to capture the sublimity of the moments fleeting past her. She consciously decided to let go of 'the analysis of the moments from a future vantage point' and capture the here and now instead. The result has been three chapters of introspective music, all from different mindsets and geographies. Across the trilogy, Anoushka has tried to craft a continual yet independent sonic narrative, charting an emotional journey through joy of simple moments, uncertainty and grief, and then awakening. While in Chapter 1: Forever, For Now (2023), the sparse pieces emerged from an afternoon with her children in the garden of her London home, Chapter 2: How Dark it is Before Dawn moved to the night and looked at its deeper textures as well as of the mind where the shadows of the past still lingered. Chapter 3: We Return to Light, conceptually, is a return to dawn as well as the basics. Three different producers, different geographies that are home in different ways and different ideas that are still woven into a thread. A collaboration with Alam Khan, US-based son of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the album is a reminder of their fathers: Pt Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar, whose duets have remained a stuff of lore. This, I feel, was going to be the tranquil release for her. While it does echo the bond, and the interplay of the sarod and sitar sounds elegant, some of it feels a little embryonic, like it needed more time. It drifts and you want to not go along sometimes. But what's absolutely gorgeous is the title track, based on raag Maanj Khamaj, often played by their fathers. It shimmers like the dawn Anoushka seeks. Hiraeth (meaning deep longing in Welsh) is another piece that stays. In raag Palash Kaafi, composed by her father, it's perhaps Anoushka's expression of her yearning for him. Dancing on Scorched Earth is a meditative piece in the morning glory that is Ramkali. This is where Korwar sounds fabulous. The other pieces like We burn so brightly, Daybreak and Amrita, for me, fall in the ambient category. They all feel like safe play and one wishes it went beyond the sheltered and into the vulnerable that Anoushka does so well. One is appreciative of how Anoushka has used her own life to represent Hindustani classical music, something that almost never happens in the relatively strict space. From the sadness of a painful past (her partner's infidelity, divorce, many surgeries, finally speaking about her childhood sexual abuse), which resulted in very poignant music, Anoushka is forging ahead. We will be waiting for the music that comes after this transformative journey. Artistes: Anoushka Shankar, Alam Khan, Sarathy Korwar Label: LEITER Available on: Spotify Rating: Three stars
Forbes
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Anoushka Shankar Curates Brighton Festival 2025: A Celebration Of Indian Art And Performance With Highlights Including Aakash Odedra Songs Of The Bulbul.
BF25 Guest Director Anoushka Shankar. Photo Credit Laura Lewis. BF25 Guest Director Anoushka Shankar. Photo Credit Laura Lewis. Anoushka Shankar, the Grammy-nominated renowned sitar virtuoso and composer, has taken the helm as Guest Director for the Brighton Festival 2025, bringing a rich tapestry of Indian art and performance to the forefront of this year's program. Her curation is themed around New Dawn and the program of diverse performances and artistic collaborations illuminates notions of transformation, renewal, and the interconnectedness of cultures. Brighton Festival is England's largest annual curated multi-arts festival and the 2025 edition features an eclectic multi-arts line-up curated by Shankar as a rallying cry for a more hopeful future. We are living through an era defined by conflict and unrest around the world, yet Shankar's theme of New Dawn invites performers at the festival to send a message of hope for our collective ability to heal and recover. Shankar's New Dawn festival program features seven world premieres including Wembley, written by Nikesh Shukla (The Good Immigrant) Nikesh Patel (Starstruck) and Himesh Patel (Yesterday) in the aftermath of the 2024 riots and a riveting programme of South Asian music, dance and performance including Meera Syal, Aakash Odedra, Aditya Prakash, Aruna Sairam and Arooj Aftab. Other highlights of the festival include evim [my home]. Ceyda Tanc is a Turkish-British choreographer who has presented two world premieres at Brighton Festival this year. Starring an all-female cast, Tanc's work explores the interplay between Turkish folk dance and contemporary UK culture. Tanc collaborated with childhood friend Natasha Granger to create evim as a magical interactive dance theatre piece for 0-5 year olds and their families. EVIM Ceyda Tanc Dance & Theatre Fideri Fidera, Brighton Festival 2025. EVIM Ceyda Tanc Dance & Theatre Fideri Fidera, Brighton Festival 2025. I was fortunate enough to witness Aakash Odedra's unforgettable dance performance Songs of the Bulbul at the Festival, which completely blew me away with his phenomenal energy and spirit. Songs of the Bulbul is a perfect fit for Shankar's theme of New Dawn and at its centre is a passionate dance performance that unfolds like poetry in motion. A moving meditation on life, death, and rebirth, it is at once deeply personal and universally resonant—an ode to Odedra's late mother, tenderly expressed through the character of a Bulbul (Persian for Songbird). Nightingales, or Bulbuls, are revered in Persian culture where their song represents a spiritual seeker looking for union with the divine. Aakash Odedra collaborated with choreographer Rani Khanam and musician Rushil Ranjan on Songs of the Bulbul, which is inspired by the ancient Sufi myth of a bulbul captured and held in captivity. The performance follows the experience of a Songbird–played by Odedra–who was bound ever closer and slowly died from a broken heart, emitting one last song before expiring. Odedra's magical performance tells the tale of beauty born out of loss and the freedom that can be found only through the ultimate sacrifice. The musical, dance and poetic traditions of Sufism are at the heart of this compelling new theatrical experience created by two of the world's leading Sufi Kathak artists. Odedra's epic dance performance combines the physicality of Kathak with the spiritual journey of Sufism on a quest to seeking unity with the Divine. Songs of the Bulbul, Aakash Odedra Company. Brighton Festival 25. Photo Credit Angela Grabowska Songs of the Bulbul, Aakash Odedra Company. Brighton Festival 25. Photo Credit Angela Grabowska Odedra inhabits this songbird with astonishing physicality, his fluid, soaring movements capturing both fragility and resilience. The performance is powerful and life-affirming, filled with visceral emotion that transcends the stage and invites the audience into a dreamlike realm. Beguiling and profound, Songs of the Bulbul is a rare work of dance that not only tells a story but also touches the soul. Odedra takes the audience on a mystical journey with his utterly mesmerising dance performance which emits so many emotions without any words. In Songs of the Bulbul, Odedra delivers a profoundly evocative performance and offers the audience an immersive experience steeped in grief, love, and spiritual transcendence. This new work is a deeply personal tribute to Odedra's late mother Kay—who he describes as his 'smiling bulbul who left her cage.' Through an eloquent fusion of movement and music, Odedra explores the fragile, soaring life of a songbird, using it as a metaphor for death, liberation, and the cyclical nature of existence. There is some reference in Odedra's performance to Whirling Dervishes of the Sufi order, who are known for their unique practice of whirling as part of religious ritual Sama. Also called Sufi whirling, the dance is a form of physical meditation and a way for dervishes to connect with God. Odedra takes the spirit of the Whirling Dervish and adapts it into a thoroughly contemporary dance performance which he puts his heart and soul into. From the moment he steps onto the stage, Odedra becomes the bulbul. His body channels both the anguish and the beauty of a creature caught between worlds. Every glide, every turn of his hand, pulses with emotion. His kathak-infused movements—rooted in the classical Sufi tradition—are not mere technical displays, but living, breathing expressions of longing, resistance, and ultimate surrender. At times he seems almost weightless, caught in a dance that feels like prayer; at others, his body twists in raw anguish, echoing the pain of loss and the yearning for transcendence. The performance is notable for its absence of spoken word. Yet in that silence, a story of immense depth unfolds—one of life, death, and eventual rebirth. Odedra guides the audience through these spiritual and emotional realms with the grace of a seasoned storyteller. The music, rich with Indian classical and devotional tones, acts as a second voice—an aural current upon which Odedra's movements sail. The rhythm of the tabla, the lament of string instruments, and the undercurrent of poetic chant form a symphony of sacred mourning and quiet hope. There is a meditative stillness to Songs of the Bulbul, a quality that invites reflection. It may well draw inspiration from The Conference of the Birds, the 12th-century Sufi parable by Attar of Nishapur, where birds journey in search of the mythical Simurgh, only to discover that the divine truth lies within. The Conference of the Birds is a poem about sufism, the doctrine propounded by the mystics of Islam. In Songs of the Bulbul, Odedra's songbird seems to travel through despair toward a luminous inner peace—an embrace of death not as an end, but a beginning. Ultimately, Songs of the Bulbul is not just a performance—it is a ritual, a requiem, and a rebirth. Odedra has crafted a work that is both deeply personal and universally resonant, rooted in cultural tradition yet unbound by geography or language. It is a stirring reminder that through art, we can give voice to the unspeakable, and in movement, find meaning beyond words. Anoushka Shankar, Brighton Festival 25. Photo Credit Carly Hildebrant. Anoushka Shankar, Brighton Festival 25. Photo Credit Carly Hildebrant A highlight of the festival promises to be Anoushka Shankar's performance of Chapter III– the culmination of her recent trilogy of mini-albums: Chapter I: Forever, For Now, Chapter II: How Dark it is Before Dawnand Chapter III: We Return to Light with a visionary new live show–on Sunday 25th May at Brighton Dome.
CBC
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Anoushka Shankar wants you to hear the sitar differently
Throughout her career, Anoushka Shankar has resisted people putting her music into a box. As the daughter of the legendary sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar, Anoushka is often confronted with the expectation that she'd only make traditional Indian classical music. But since the late '90s, the Grammy-nominated sitar player has pushed the boundaries of her instrument, incorporating symphonic, electronic, jazz and pop music into her sound. "I feel with every increasing year, I chafe just that little bit more around what feels like a restrictive perception around my instrument: the sitar," Anoushka tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "If you think of a guitar or you think of a piano … you don't necessarily automatically think of a genre — you think of the instrument. It can be used to dig into any number of genres and it could be a part of those." WATCH | Anoushka Shankar's full interview with Tom Power: For most people around the world, Anoushka says the sitar conjures a very specific set of images, such as the 1960s, incense, flying carpets or meditation. "Those things are a part of its history, they're a part of its journey, but the instrument is also broader and bigger than that and has so many other possibilities." Recently, Anoushka released Chapter III: We Return to Light, the final chapter in a trilogy of mini-albums she started two years ago. The album was inspired by Goa, India, and the trance music and raves she found there in her 20s. I would just be on dance floors till morning or I'd be out in Goa at a rave for two days. - Anoushka Shankar "Throughout my 20s, I kind of felt like I lived a sort of double life," she says. "I was touring with my dad as a teenager, and then I was touring on my own. I was on all these classical stages, and I was playing ragas…. Then I'd kind of get things out of my system by … having this completely other life where I'd be with friends and DJs and artists. I would just be on dance floors till morning or I'd be out in Goa at a rave for two days." WATCH | Anoushka Shankar performing New Dawn: In her mid-20s, Anoushka started to merge those different interests through her music. On her 2016 album, Land of Gold, she started looping, layering and touring with a pedal board for the first time. "It's another part of how I've changed the way I think with my instrument, because suddenly you can be a bit more orchestral or a bit more layered in the way that we play a linear melodic instrument," she says. "Coming back to the Indian classical music that the sitar comes from, it's a system based on melody and rhythm — or ragas and talas — not harmony and counterpoint like Western music. So our instruments simply aren't designed to play chords and those kind of broad textures in an accurate way. It's more lead melody stuff, even if we have resonating strings to make it sound fuller."
