Six-time Grammy® Award-nominated sitarist, composer and producer Anoushka Shankar will be embarking on her worldwide tour of her latest EP Love Letters in India this February and performing in the cities of Mumbai and Delhi.

This tour, promoted by Alchemist Marketing Solutions, will mark her grand homecoming to the Indian sub-continent after more than 2 years. With a flair of demonstrating the versatility of the sitar, the sitar virtuoso will embark on a two-city tour, performing her songs from her brand-new EP Love Letters, a compilation of songs written across 2018-2019, which will release just before the tour in February 2020.

Following the success of her past albums, some of which were 2013’s ‘Traces Of You’, 2015's ‘Home’, and 2016’s ‘Land Of Gold’ which was performed at Glastonbury, Big Ears and the Sydney Opera House, Love Letters documents a time of profound flux for the artist: health issues, heartbreak, domestic upheaval. “These were heavy shocks and challenges, things which pushed me into some very vulnerable places. I’ve written from a personal place before, of course, but there was something particularly tender and raw about the process this time,” says Shankar.  

For two decades, this world-famous performer has been hailed as a maverick, seamlessly merging classical with contemporary, East with West. Her reputation as a live performer is unparalleled, and while previous concerts tend to favour volume, drama and dazzling, technical prowess, Love Letters will reveal Anoushka delving into a more intimate, stripped back mode, bringing to the fore her vulnerable and raw side as a songwriter and musician.

The first single from her to-be-released EP, Lovable, featuring French-Cuban twin duo Ibeyi, released late last year.  It marked a different direction for Anoushka, a shift in intimacy and content, and came at a pivotal moment in her career as she signed to a new record label, Mercury KX. The single marked a new chapter for Anoushka, breaking with personal tradition to perform vocals for the very first time.  Since then, Love Letters has seen the release of singles Bright Eyes and In THIS Mouth both featuring singer and co-producer Alev Lenz.

Writing and recording Love Letters has been an exercise in catharsis for Anoushka Shankar, and sees her collaborating almost exclusively with female peers. During the toughest parts of that 2018-2019 period, Shankar found the practical and emotional support that her friends, fellow artists and performers offered became, quite naturally, artistic in nature.  

A rotating cast of vocalists, musicians and producers, with Alev Lenz as the principal collaborator, would turn up for emotional support and talks that evolved into song-writing sessions: informal workshops sandwiched between school runs and spent crossed legged on Shankar’s living room floor. “I really got to experience the way women show up for each other when crisis strikes. There was this sweetness; I felt very held throughout this process, and that’s really where this music came from – the shared experience of women, holding my hand and helping me find a safe place to put some of my feelings.”

Anoushka is no stranger to seeking strength through vulnerability. The accolades she has amassed over her twenty-year career extend beyond her contributions to music and into the realm of activism, championing feminist and humanitarian causes. In 2013, in response to the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey in New Delhi, Anoushka teamed up with the One Billion Rising campaign, courageously sharing her experience as a survivor of sexual abuse. In 2017 she narrated Stolen Innocence, a documentary film about human trafficking and in 2019, she went viral after posting about her recent hysterectomy, sparking a dialogue around the silence and shame that historically surround women and girls’ reproductive health.

Ultimately, ‘Lovable’ and its sister songs on Love Letters are about more than heartbreak or loss; they pull from various wellsprings – nostalgia, regret, pain, hope – and mark a quiet metamorphosis for the artist. “They’re really about rising through the pain, rather than shutting down.” And rise she has: 2020 will see Shankar touring her new music, alongside special gala performances to commemorate the centenary of her father Ravi Shankar’s birth.  Loves may come and go, change may be the only constant, but Shankar’s purpose as an artist, a campaigner and a survivor remain unshakeable.

Organised by her management company, Alchemist Marketing Solutions, this will be the artist’s 6^th music album to tour India, starting with 2 cities.  Says Anujita Jain, CEO of Alchemist Marketing Solutions, “The India concerts in February will mark her first tour worldwide for Love Letters, and we are glad to bring this intimate and immersive musical experience to music lovers in Mumbai and Delhi.”