Round Table 3 Ladies Circle 4 presents “Land of Gold” by Anoushka Shankar – Live Concert in aid of Charity, an experience brought to you by beep on 2nd December at Lady AndalSir MuthaVenkatasubbha Rao Hall Chennai
5-time Grammy-nominated sitar player and global composer Anoushka Shankar returns to the Indian sub-continent this December after performing to full houses in Europe, North America, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates throughout 2016. With a flair for making the sitar speak a number of musical languages, sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar will champion a massive six-city tour, in support of her inspired new album “Land of Gold” which released globally on Deutsche Grammophon earlier this summer. The tour is being curated by Alchemist Marketing Solutions.
Having won emotional, rave reviews at festivals such as the legendary Glastonbury Festival, WOMAD Festival, Granada Festival, Rudolstadt Festival, Esperanzah Festival, and Helsinki Festival this summer, Anoushka has a packed autumn/winter touring schedule with performances lined up at venues including the iconic Musikgebouw, Royal Festival Hall, and Birmingham Symphony Hall, making time for India in between.
Not just that, Anoushka has also recently showcased her new album at BBC’s penultimate episode of the iconic ‘Later with Jools Holland’- one of Britain’s iconic contemporary music television show. The show is considered an institution in itself having garnered millions of fans around the world.
“Land of Gold” embraces electronics and cross-genre collaborations, and is Anoushka Shankar’s fervent response to the humanitarian trauma of displaced people fleeing conflict and poverty. Organised by her management company, Alchemist Marketing Solutions, this will be the artist’s 5th country-wide solo tour of India. Says Anujita Jain, CEO of Alchemist, “Apart from the music, Anoushka carefully curates the light and look for each stage performance, so that the audience truly has an immersive experience.
To ensure that Land of Gold reaches audiences across most of India, we have lined up an ambitious tour this year, covering 6 cities over 2 weekends.” Launching on the 2nd and culminating on the 11th, the tour will travel to Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad, allowing enthusiasts to experience an evocative journey infused with a message of enduring hope. With Land of Gold, Shankar looks out at the world with a musical “cry against injustice” and offers an excursion of haunting honesty and fiery exorcism, as spirited as it is spiritual.
Five-time Grammy® nominee Anoushka Shankar states, “Land of Gold is the culmination of my journey to the interior, channeling my distress at the situation in a constructive way, exploring the stories of the voiceless and dispossessed. The central message of Land of Gold is the recognition of the resilience of the human spirit and of our capacity to find the place where enduring hope resides. Everyone is, in some way or another, searching for their own ‘Land of Gold’: a journey to a place of security, connectedness and tranquillity, which they can call home. The idea of millions of people being driven out of their homes, and of children not having safe shelter or passage, is not a political issue, it’s a humanitarian issue. I’m not pretending I can change the world, or to be an expert on social and political affairs. But I certainly have a right to say when something is wrong. It’s important to be a part of a culture and community, and to be a positive influence in every aspect of my life that I can.”
Synonymous with Indian classical melodies and music, Shankar makes it a custom to integrate India on her annual global touring calendar every winter. Trailblazing, as her legendary father Late Pandit Ravi Shankar was, Anoushka Shankar continues to push the limits of her chosen instrument, not only in the traditional Indian Classical form, but also by breaking boundaries and working with new sounds and art forms.
Following the success of her 2013 album, Traces of You, and 2015’s classical album Home, Anoushka Shankar returns with an innovative, cutting-edge programme addressing themes of movement, asylum, refugees; a topic that deeply inspired the creative process whilst composing the music for Land of Gold. When asked her how excited about performing in Chennai Anoushka Shankar states that “Chennai is one of the cities I actually love, my mom comes from Chennai and this is the place where we would love to spend more time during childhood. I have a very strong and happy memories connected to Chennai and also more thrilled to perform here my album Land of gold in midst of Chennai audience”.
Deftly fusing music traditions from India with electronica, jazz, hip-hop, minimalism and more, the genre-blurring “Gold” teams her with everyone from Björk’s musical director, Matt Robertson and Sri Lankan rap star M.I.A. to American jazz bass dynamo Larry Grenadier, Austrian percussionist genius and one of the album’s co-writers Manu Delago, dance legend Akram Khan and English actress/activist Vanessa Redgrave. Given that the majority of songs on “Land of Gold” are entirely instrumental, it is — ultimately — Shankar’s music that speaks the loudest on the album. The largely-instrumental album frames Shankar’s sitar in a rich, sympathetic soundscape. Shankar will present the album live with an exemplary quartet of instrumentalists- all also triggering live electronics- comprising of herself, hang-player and percussionist Manu Delago, Shahani exponent Sanjeev Shankar and London’s top bassist/pianist Tom Farmer.
