Just when it seemed that she'd left music far behind her, she received a phone call that changed everything. As a senior, she earned a Rhodes Scholarship and prepared to move to Oxford, England, to complete her Ph.D. Spending long hours in the lab (with humans and monkeys) didn't seem that hard compared to the countless hours she spent as a child perfecting an etude. At 17, Maya now had to answer the most daunting of questions: "What do I do now?"Īt Yale, Shankar enveloped herself in cognitive science and social activism. She had been studying with Itzhak Perlman, and worked for almost a year with just her one good hand before calling it quits. The sound of "hand injury" strikes fear in the heart of any musician, and in Shankar's case, she was advised by doctors to stop playing altogether.
Surprisingly, she wasn't earning national press for her music, but instead for science.Īs a senior in high school, Shankar suffered a serious injury in her hand. It wasn't until a producer caught her name in a list of Glamour Magazine's Top 10 College Women that we learned what she was up to. We invited her back on the show twice more before she graduated from high school.Īfter that, we lost track of Shankar.
This week's guest is violinist Maya Shankar, whom I first met as a 12-year-old on one of our pilot episodes. That's certainly true in the case of From the Top's 10th anniversary, and we've had great fun catching up with performers from our first decade. Part of the fun in celebrating any anniversary is reminiscing about the past.
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