Brighton Dome, Sunday 25 May 2025
The closing night of Brighton Festival 2025 under the new auspices of Lucy Davies as Chief Executive of Brighton Dome, Brighton Festival and Create Music, delivered a transcendental experience that must linger in the hearts of all who attended. In a packed Brighton Dome, Anoushka Shankar — this year’s Guest Director — took to the stage with her ensemble to perform Chapter III: We Return to Light, the culminating piece of her visionary trilogy of mini-albums. This concert was a magical, immersive, transformative journey of sound, story, and soul in one evening.
Photo credit – Nicola Benge
Shankar’s performance marked the final statement in a trilogy that began with Chapter I: Forever, For Now (2023) and continued with the Grammy-nominated Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn (2024). These works explored the spectrum of human experience — from fleeting joy to deep sorrow and the vulnerable process of healing. Chapter III launched in March 2025 completes the cycle, leading audiences into the warm, golden promise of a new day — a space of renewal, wisdom, and hope.
Although she did not perform Chapters I and II at the Festival itself, Shankar’s artistic presence throughout this year’s programme was deeply felt. Earlier in the month, she presented Passages in collaboration with Britten Sinfonia — a reimagining of the iconic 1990 album co-created with Philip Glass and her father Ravi Shankar, that fused Indian classical and minimalist styles into something timeless and transcendent. She also presented and performed at Brown Girl in the Ring: Words in Motion — a powerful, poetic and multidisciplinary event celebrating South Asian women’s voices, presented at the beginning of May.
But it was Chapter III that brought the festival to a luminous, soul-stirring conclusion. Though unable to speak due to vocal strain, Shankar entrusted her trio of bandmates to read her words aloud — a thoughtful act that only underscored the generosity and intimacy of the evening. Her reflections — on love, loss, motherhood, and resilience — were moving, funny, and deeply personal, offering insight into both her creative journey and her vision for this festival as Guest Director.
Photo credit – Nicola Benge
The music itself was extraordinary. Accompanied by this stellar group of musicians on clarinet, keyboard, bass and drums, Shankar pushed the sitar into new terrain, bending and looping its sound to create what she describes as an “Indo-futurist” sonic world. The result was richly layered and emotionally expansive — a soundscape that carried us through grief, strength, sensuality and rebirth.
Tracks from this new album include the haunting Hiraeth, the soaring Daybreak, the searingly emotional We Burn So Brightly, and the tender We Return to Love. Other pieces — Dancing on Scorched Earth and Amrita — were equally evocative, drawing the audience into the contours of loss and the defiant beauty that can follow it.
This was not just the work of a master musician — though that she most certainly is. It was the work of a woman in full command of her art and message. While her early training came from her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar, she has undeniably carved out her own independent, creative path — one that fuses tradition with innovation, and personal narrative with collective resonance.
This third chapter, We Return to Light, is the fruit of collaboration as much as solo mastery. Developed and performed with Alam Khan and Sarathy Korwar, with additional contributions from Nina Harries and Pirashanna Thevarajah, the album was produced by Korwar, co-produced by Saloni Thakkar, mixed by James Campbell, and mastered by Heba Kadry. The result is a rich, cohesive and utterly mesmerising piece of work that pulses with both vulnerability and power.
Shankar has always resisted easy categorisation. She is a sitar virtuoso, a genre-defying composer, a mother, an activist, and a cultural leader. She was the first Indian woman to be nominated for a Grammy, the youngest and first female recipient of a British House of Commons Shield, and one of the first five female composers included in the UK’s A-level music syllabus.
With over 25 years of performance behind her, she remains a boundary-breaker in every sense. Chapter III: We Return to Light is available now on vinyl and digital platforms, and Shankar continues her European tour this summer — including a date in Reading this June followed by a North American tour.
Photo credit – Nicola Benge
As the final notes of the evening faded, there was a moment of collective stillness in the Dome — a kind of reverence that only follows a performance which has truly moved people. This was followed by a standing ovation which was richly deserved. In a festival that has looked toward A New Dawn, this closing event was a perfect embodiment: a radiant, soul-soothing, heart-opening celebration of our capacity to begin again.
