Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka Shankar was born in London on 9 June 1981 and began studying the sitar with her father, Pandit Ravi Shankar, as a child, learning by ear in the traditional way. Her public debut came at the age of thirteen, and her own biography records that she is currently marking thirty years of touring since then.

Alongside classical recital work she has collaborated widely — with Herbie Hancock, Patti Smith, Sting, Zubin Mehta, Joshua Bell, Arooj Aftab, Nils Frahm and her half-sister Norah Jones among others — and has written for the screen. Her film work began with the British Film Institute's restoration of Shiraz, one of the first major Indian silent features, which she scored and performed live to picture; she went on to co-compose the score for Mira Nair's A Suitable Boy, nominated for Best Television Soundtrack at the Ivor Novello Awards.

She was the first Indian musician to perform at the Grammy Awards and the first Indian woman to be nominated there, and has been nominated thirteen times. At eighteen she was the youngest and first female recipient of a British House of Commons Shield. She is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, received an Honorary Degree in Music from the University of Oxford in June 2024, and was Guest Director of the Brighton Festival in 2025. Her most recent release is Chapter III: We Return to Light, the closing part of a trilogy of mini-albums.

Trained entirely in her father's manner of teaching — by ear, with the improvisatory freedom he was known for — and applied as readily to written scores and mixed ensembles as to a classical recital.