TIP

Sitar player Anoushka Shankar is probably India's most dazzling musical export at the moment. The fact that she is following in the footsteps of her world-famous father, the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, does not bother the sitarist, who was born in London in 1981: "He was not only my father, but also my guru. And so today she continues his musical approach of bringing together Western and Eastern music.

After three traditional sitar albums, Anoushka Shankar released her groundbreaking self-produced album "Rise" in 2005, showing for the first time how far the sitar's possibilities can reach. Since then, her collaborations with a wide variety of musicians have been true syntheses of traditional Indian raga music and modern Western popular music or folklore. In "Traveller" (2011), for example, she mixed the Spanish musical tradition of flamenco with Indian music, in "Traces of you" (2013) she collaborated with her half-sister Norah Jones (some of you may know her), and for the recently released album "Land of Gold" she invited the rapper M.I.A. and the jazz double bassist Larry Grenadier as guests.

Together with the MDR Symphony Orchestra and Kristjan Järvi, she will perform the Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra No. 2 "Raga Mala" by Ravi Shankar and two symphonies by Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma.

MDR Festival of Lights (4.-19.6.)