New York, NY (Top40 Charts) "It feels a bit strange to be releasing a compilation, as I still feel as if I'm at the beginning of a (hopefully) much longer journey ahead," writes Anoushka Shankar on her latest Deutsche Grammophon album, Reflections. "However, it does amaze me to realize that I released my first album more than twenty years ago, as a teenager."
Releasing worldwide on March 8 via Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music, Reflections offers a compelling retrospective of Anoushka's career so far. The Grammy Award-nominated sitar player and composer selected fifteen favourite tracks, each of which holds profound personal meaning for her. Together they create a space in which listeners can stop for a while, contemplate the world today, search for the strength within themselves, and cultivate compassion for anyone facing violence, oppression or personal crisis.
Music has the power "to express how even within chaos, one can find beauty when in connection with another human being," says Anoushka Shankar.
Reflections explores her commitment to cross-cultural dialogue, present in her selection of standout tracks from such acclaimed albums as Land of Gold, Traces of You, Breathing Under Water and Rise. She traces her roots in Indian classical music in "Jod, Jhala", based on the raga Jogeshwari created by her father, the legendary sitar master Ravi Shankar, whom she joins in "Pancham Se Gara". Playing with him, she observes, was both a gift and a joy. In fact, Reflections opens with "The Sun Won't Set", written with Nitin Sawhney shortly before the death of her father. She recorded the piece with her half-sister, Norah Jones, thirty days after his passing. "My father's name, Ravi, means 'sun' in Sanskrit, and this song was a way for me to express my feelings in his final months," Anoushka recalls.
The joy and fulfilment she feels when making music with others shines through the tracks on Reflections, which also features collaborations with, among others, Spanish flamenco stars Pedro Ricardo Miño and Duquende, Austrian hang player Manu Delago, German-Turkish singer-songwriter Alev Lenz, American composer and producer DJ Karsh Kale, Israeli vocalist Noa Lembersky and American folk maestro Barry Phillips. Actress and activist
Vanessa Redgrave reads Pavana Reddy's poetry in "Remain the Sea", a response to the European refugee crisis of 2015, while
Norah Jones appears again in "Traces of You", a haunting meditation on the way we carry with us the people we have lost and the places we have left behind.
The release of Reflections coincides with the start of Anoushka's latest North American tour. Beginning March 9 with a concert at the Riverbend Centre for the Arts in Austin, Texas, she will then cross the Atlantic for concerts in Dublin and at London's Royal Festival Hall before returning to North
America for a run of fourteen performances including five Canadian dates. See Canadian tour dates listed below.
"No one embodies the spirit of innovation and experimentation more evidently than Anoushka Shankar" (Nitin Sawhney)
Canadian Tour Dates:
Apr 26 - Arts Commons, Calgary
Apr 27 - Chan Centre, Vancouver
Apr 30 - Palais Montcalm, Québec City
May 2 - Royal Conservatory, Toronto
May 3 - Monument National, Montréal.
