Shankar

Lakshminarayana Shankar (born April 26, 1950), or L. Shankar, was born in Madras, South India. Growing up in Sri Lanka where his father V. Lakshminaraya Iyer was a professor at the Jaffna College of Music, Shankar was exposed to Carnatic music from an early age. His father was an esteemed violinist, his mother L. Seethalakshmi played the veena and all his five older siblings were also proficient in music. At the age of seven he gave his first public concert. He gained considerable reputation in his early youth as an accompanist to some of the most eminent names in Carnatic music such as Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Chembai Vaithyanatha Baghavatar, Palghat Mani Iyer and Alathur Srinivasa lyer. Following the ethnic riots of 1953 his family moved back to India.

After obtaining a bachelor's degree in physics in India, Shankar moved to America in 1969 and earned a doctorate in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, where he met jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Garrison, and John McLaughlin while working as a teaching assistant and concert master of the university chamber orchestra. In 1975 Shankar and McLaughlin founded Shakti pioneering a groundbreaking and highly influential east-meets-west collaborative, fluid sound that managed to successfully combine seemingly incompatible traditions. After the disbanding of Shakti in 1978 Shankar founded his own band - The Epidemics. His first solo album, Touch Me There, was produced by Frank Zappa in 1979.

During the 1980s, Shankar recorded periodically as a leader, doing both jazz-based material and Indian classical music. His 1980 release of the album Who's To Know on ECM introduced the unique sound of his own invention, the ten-string, stereophonic double violin. This instrument, designed by Shankar and built by noted guitar maker Ken Parker, covers the entire orchestral range, including double bass, cello, viola and violin. He has recently developed a newer version of his instrument which is much lighter than the original.

In 1994 Shankar won the Grammy for Passion in which he co-wrote 13 of the tracks with Peter Gabriel. Shankar has performed on several of Peter Gabrial's records such as So and Us. In 1996 Shankar, with fellow-violinist Gingger, who is his niece (daughter of L.Subramaniam) toured as the duo "Shankar & Gingger".

Shankar has played with some of the greatest musical contemporaries of his time, including Frank Zappa, Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Stewart Copeland, Yoko Ono, John Waite, Steve Vai, Ginger Baker, Toto, Nils Lofgren, and Sting. He has also effortlessly married Eastern and Western influences, assimilating Carnatic music with pop, rock, jazz and contemporary world music. "Ultimately, I would like to bring the East and West together. That, I think, is my role," says Shankar.

"The violin is no longer a secondary instrument...today, it is a very big solo instrument," says Shankar.