Ragini Shankar is an Indian violinist who performs Hindustani classical music and fusion. She is the grand-daughter of the renowned Padmabhushan Dr. N. Rajam.[2] and the daughter of Dr. Sangeeta Shankar[3]
Early life
She began her training at the age of 4 and gave her first public performance as an 11-year-old.[4] She plays violin in the Gayaki Ang, a revolutionary technique to reproduce vocal music on the violin.
Education
Shankar excelled in her education in mechanical engineering and also holds a master's degree in music.[5]
She has performed in several countries abroad; the USA,[20] Canada,[21] UK,[22] Netherlands,[7] Switzerland, [23] Germany, France,[24] Belgium,[25] Hungary, Singapore,[26] Malaysia and Dubai.[27] Ragini gives lecture demonstrations and conducts workshops on a regular basis during her travels.
She is known for her collaborations with various artists in diverse genres. Ragini and her
sister Nandini Shankar have been signed by Decca Records US, a part of Universal Music
Group for a full-length music album for their musical ensemble ‘Taraana’.[28][29]
She is a part of the renowned Bollywood lyricist Irshad Kamil’s The Ink Band, a series of poetry interwoven with music.[30][31] She is also a part of an Indo-French musical project called Sangata, formed by the noted French composer Thierry Pecou[32] and was covered in an article in Le Monde.[33] Her recent collaborations include inStrings, an innovative fusion band, giving a new sound to popular Indian tunes.[34]
Ragini is a
recipient of the distinguished Aditya Birla Kala Kiran Award[35] and the Jashn-e-Youngistan [36][37] Award presented by the Vice President of India.
She was a faculty at Whistling Woods International School of Music in Mumbai for 6 years and currently teaches at the Rajam School of Violin.[38] She has appeared on the platform of Talks at Google[39] and Tedx[40] for her talks on Indian music.