Ravi Shankar Ensemble prepares to come together for its debut U.S. tour

Perhaps no musician in history is more inextricably linked to the sitar, a plucked string instrument that emerged in the 18th century, than the Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

Born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury in 1920 and famously a musical mentor to the Beatles, particularly George Harrison, Shankar died in 2012 at age 92 and left behind a rich legacy that continues to inspire audiences and listeners around the world. The multi-generational Ravi Shankar Ensemble, curated by Shankar’s daughter Anoushka and his wife, Sukanya, plays the biggest role in keeping that legacy alive. As part of its debut U.S. tour, the six-person group will perform in a Symphony Center Presents Featured Concert on March 22.

At the center of everything and everyone will be sitar star and Shankar protegé Shubhendra Rao, who took his first lesson from the master as a child of 7 or 8 in 1973, moved in with Shankar at age 18 to begin a nearly decade-long immersive student residency (called a gurukul) and toured with Shankar into the mid-’90s.

Accompanied by  fellow ensemble members Aayush Mohan (sarod), Ravichandra Kulur (flute), Shankar’s niece Padma Shankar (violin/vocals), Anubrata Chatterjee (tabla) and B.C. Manjunath (mridangam), Rao will play a curated program that includes Shankar’s compositions, improvisations and rare archival audio and video. It is “wonderful,” he says, to revisit his deeply formative past all these years later in a leadership role.

“I feel I have a foot in both the worlds,” Rao says of past and present. He was talking by Zoom from India, where he is preparing to rehearse for the tour. “And I am very fortunate: Pre-internet, I got a very deep footing into the tradition and the music. As the world is changing, I’m able to try and see how I can adjust myself. And that’s exactly what [Shankar] would tell me.

"In my teens, he said, ‘Be strong like a banyan tree,’ which has roots so deep that you know you’re not going to be blown away by a wave of wind. But at the same time, there’s so much that flourishes under the banyan tree. And [the ensemble] is a wonderful set of musicians. Top-notch artists. So it’s not going to be difficult for them, musically and emotionally, to come together. I think it will be a wonderful journey.”

Rao’s first time onstage as a soloist with Shankar happened in New Delhi, and with very little notice, the same year he began his gurukul — 1983. He was told: “You’re going on with me in a couple of hours.” Baptism by fire. “When you are onstage, it’s a different kind of learning when you go through it in front of an audience.

"Of course, it’s a very supportive role as a student. And then [I had] the opportunity to be with him when he was composing music for orchestras or for collaborations that he was doing, whether it was live in the Kremlin or for the movie ’Gandhi.’ ”

While the past inevitably informs the present to a certain degree, Rao is always conscious of moving forward. All music, he says, must be dynamic and reflect the current society, rather than staying mired in history. With the sitar, he adds, “we speak the language of today, while keeping the tradition strong. Indian music has survived for thousands of years because it’s dynamic.”

The only significant adjustment that needs to be made for the instrument to be properly heard — and therefore have the desired impact — in a space like Symphony Center is amplification, Rao says. Not only for the audience’s benefit, but so he and his fellow players can clearly hear themselves onstage. That’s why they travel with their own sound engineer.

“Most Indian instruments beyond a certain small space need to be amplified,” Rao says. “A violin or a Western orchestra has the [unamplified] power to reach the last row. Indian instruments, unfortunately, don’t have that same power, so every single concert has to be amplified, even if it’s just a slightly bigger room.”

Made of a gourd resonator and a long, hollow wooden neck, sitars have 18 to 21 strings, a corresponding number of tuning pegs, 20 movable curved metal frets and a series of bridges on a flat tun/toon wood or teak soundboard (tabli). Different strings produce different sounds, including a “drone” that serves as the base for intricate, microtonal melodies that are a sonic departure from those of Western music, which typically employs 12 semitones per octave.

A sitar player can manipulate the strings to produce notes that effectively fall between the traditional dozen semitones. In Indian classical theory, there are traditionally 22 pitch divisions (shruti) per octave. Also unlike a lot of Western music, which tends to emphasize harmonic progression and goal-oriented development (musical ideas are driven toward a specific resolution), sitar compositions are rooted in a kind of melodic scaffolding called ragas, as well as rhythmic cycles called talas that orbit a central tonic note. As you might imagine, doing all of that — especially at the highest levels — is physically and mentally taxing. 

“The high-tension strings cut through your fingers,” Rao says. “I’ve had experiences where they’re bleeding on stage, and you have to continue to play. That’s on your left hand. On the right hand, you’re wearing this kind of plectrum, which has to be so tight. If you see my finger, it [looks] like it’s disfigured. And then to sit in that [rigid, cross-legged] posture on the floor has its own challenges. With years of doing that, you get spondylitis [inflammatory arthritis in the spine]. And my shoulders are not working as they should. I had an issue with my shoulder, and when I went to the physiotherapist, he didn’t know I played the sitar. And he said, ‘Are you a boxer?’ ”

For those reasons and others, Rao says, mental preparation is key. “I try to shut away the world. Since we are improvising, music has to be [part of] a flow. You become the medium. There should be nothing stopping you physically or mentally. So I try to completely empty myself to let that flow happen.”

The music is there. He just needs to channel it. And when he does so for audiences, including the one at Symphony Center, Rao hopes they encounter something unique both musically and emotionally. Ideally, he says, it’s an experience “they would love to get more and more of.”