Shabby acoustics ruin Anoushka Shankar's Oz concert

Sydney, June 16 : Anoushka Shankar, the daughter of sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, knows how to leave crowds mesmerized by her sweet music on the sitar. Sadly, that wasn't enough to pull off her recent concert in Australia that was compromised by shabby production values.

The Sydney Opera House Concert Hall has copped buckets of abuse for its acoustics, but a series of simple improvements over the past nine months have gone a long way to helping matters.

The instruments were over-amplified, poorly mixed and poorly equalised and the lighting was haphazard and distracting, reports Sydney Morning Herald.

Those expecting the pop-oriented crossover sounds of Anoushka's recent albums were also disappointed: there was not a sampler in sight.

The piano and the cello were initially buried in the mix, but ultimately one could identify that Shankar's incorporation of Western instruments into the Indian idiom was often convincing and always interesting.

ANI