A new sitar turn

THERE is a feline grace about Anoushka Shankar as she sits cross-legged onstage, as she did earlier this year at the San Francisco Opera House, her dark hair flowing gently across the golden threads of her sari.

Her long, many-stringed sitar -- ungainly for some players, surprisingly elegant in her small hands -- is propped on one knee as she moves and sways with the music, making almost constant eye contact with the veteran sitarist seated next to her: Ravi Shankar, her father.

They are, by almost any definition, a remarkable musical duo: 85-year-old Ravi, the man who has done more than any other to bring Indian classical music to the West; Anoushka, his 24-year-old daughter and protegee.

Performing 60 or more concerts a year together, usually before packed houses, the duo has sustained the importance of Indian music in the concert halls of the world. (They’ll appear at Disney Hall in late April.)

Despite the joined-at-the-hip musical aspects of her live performances with her father, Anoushka has been establishing her individual presence via recordings since the late ‘90s: “Anoushka,” her first solo CD, was released in 1998, “Anourag” followed in 2000, the Grammy-nominated “Live at Carnegie Hall” in 2001 -- a trio of performances chronicling the remarkable maturing of her work. She’s one of the most gifted artists in her generation of Indian classical artists. But to much of the public, she’s still Ravi’s other daughter, her visibility eclipsed by the pop music star power of her half sister, Norah Jones.

“Rise,” Anoushka’s newest CD, scheduled for release Tuesday, could begin to change that. It’s a collection of original material that takes her beyond the Indian world into a uniquely contemporary vision of world music. She describes the choice of title as a symbol for “my journey and who I am right now.... Rise signifies growth.”

As she sits in the verdant outdoor garden of a Melrose Avenue teahouse, her classic features are smoothly symmetrical, and her poise underscores a confident sense of self that matches her presence onstage. But there is also a buoyant energy in her fast-paced conversation, the dance-like movements of her hands and arms, her flashing eyes and the quickness of her laughter.

“I’ve always had two sides of me that were completely separate,” she says. Although she is speaking specifically about the genesis of the new album, there is a subtext -- her sense of passing through a transformative time in her life -- that recurs in our conversation.

Indian classical music is one of the world’s most complex art forms, a layered blend of specific ragas (similar to the modal scales of Western music), rhythms, thematic traditions and spirituality. It takes years to master the fundamental elements, much less transform them into the creative expressiveness that marks Shankar’s playing. But she has never felt completely comfortable within its demanding confines.

“I’d get up onstage and have the classical persona because that was what I did. And then I’d go to parties, and I loved to hear trance, electronics, things like that. After a while it was, ‘Who am I, in here?’ And it seemed logical to try and musically makes sense of that.”

Which is what “Rise” does, by illuminating the disparate sides of Shankar’s world view, tracing her expanding musical interests and her capacity to make intriguing creative choices without losing touch with her Indian classical roots.

In part, she has been moving in that direction for the last few years, involving herself with projects such as the 2002 “Concert for George” (Harrison), in which she conducted an Indian-Western ensemble; a guest appearance on Sting’s album “Sacred Love” and -- during a year’s sabbatical from performing in 2004 -- an immersion in music, and with musicians, from a wide array of boundary-crossing styles.

Moving through the day

THE nine pieces on the album are based on a sequence of ragas associated with different times of day, beginning with the morning sounds of “Prayer in Passing” and ending with the meditative evening passages of “Ancient Love.” In search of different timbres, Shankar included such Western instruments as cello, violin and piano, and the Middle Eastern double-reed duduk, with its intimate, vocal sound.

“I especially love the way Pedro Eustache plays the duduk,” she says, “and I would have used it everywhere. But I wanted to find a unifying space that wouldn’t have one track suddenly going another way and not matching the album.”

Her vision of a “unifying space” embraces a wide range of elements. “Prayer in Passing” reveals traces of flamenco, especially in the piano playing of Ricardo Mino. “Red Sun” features scat-like, percussive Indian “bol” vocalizing by Bikram Ghosh and Tanmoy Bose. On “Naked,” Shankar performs alone, on piano and keyboards. “Sinister Grains” includes didjeridoo and South American percussion. Several pieces employ various combinations of exotic instruments and textured electronics; two of the works are compositions by Shankar in which she does not play.

“It’s kind of me in the middle, by way of the influences that are in it,” she says. “I love the Indian compositional side of the ensemble and the acoustic music. But the electronic aspects of the album have triggered an interest in doing a fully electronic album at some time as well. I hope in life I can do both. I’d love to have the freedom to not be pinned down.”

Shankar’s desire to find her own path is understandable, given that her entire career has been directed by a father who was both a paternal pillar of strength and a demanding musical guru.

She was born in London, living in Delhi and Southern California from age 11, and began performing with Ravi when she was 10, at first playing the drone-note tanpura, then moving to the sitar at 13 (via small, medium and, eventually, full-sized instruments).

“It scared me, at the beginning,” she recalls. “Because even then I think a part of me knew what I was taking on. My parents were lovely -- they made it clear that I was just to try it. But it was still this big thing. People ask me if I would have played the sitar if I wasn’t my father’s daughter, and that’s an impossible question to answer. But still, I probably wouldn’t have. But as the case is, I totally fell in love with it within a few years or so.”

Her half sister, raised in a very different environment, chose another instrument and another path: piano and pop music. Asked about Jones, who is two years older, Shankar is focused and intense, as she tries to clarify a situation that she feels has been distorted in the media.

“It was different for both of us,” she explains, because she found out about me when she was 10. I knew about her my whole life. My mom brought me up knowing I had a sister somewhere in the States.”

In touch with Jones

WHEN Jones’ first album, “Come Away With Me,” hit the charts in 2002, the paternal connection with Ravi Shankar became a hot media topic.

“And it was misrepresented,” says Anoushka. “At that point, Norah had already been coming to visit us since she was 18. She was very much a part of our lives on a personal level, and all she was trying to do was keep the music separate. But it got really sticky for us. It was not a nice time, in the way the media decided to handle it, with people saying, ‘OK, he’ -- my father -- ‘abandoned Norah,’ and that wasn’t it.

“So it frustrates me still because I love everyone involved, and I know that no one was at fault for anything. But the important thing now is that we see each other as much as we can, which can be hard with both of us touring. But we always stay in touch.”

Pensive for a few moments, Shankar finally smiles, takes a long sip of tea. And it seems apparent that her strong feelings about her sister are yet another aspect of the transformative stage she is passing through. I ask her about what she would change to make things easier.

She laughs. “Well, it would be easier if I could step away and start a rock band and say, ‘This is me.’ But it’s hard to balance between finding your own path and not purposefully stepping away. For now, what matters is that ‘Rise’ is a very personal album, that these are my own compositions and my own space. Hopefully, it will be seen in that light.”