Chandrika Tandon: Grammy winner's journey from boardrooms to global stages

Seated in a meeting room at Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Chandrika Tandon is a picture of calmness. Having kicked off her heels, the award-winning singer is relaxing a bit after an extended day of rehearsals on the eve of the Global Fusion Musical event where she is a lead singer.

At 71, the Indian-American multi hyphenate prefers not to be defined by geography or by a single calling. Grammy Award winner. Singer. Global business leader. Composer. Philanthropist. First Indian-American woman partner at McKinsey & Company. Any one of these identities could have comfortably framed an entire life. Instead, Chandrika has chosen to live them all - and clearly relishing every moment of each.

Last year, the world took notice in a new way when Triveni, her collaborative album with South African flautist Wouter Kellerman, and noted cellist Eru Matsumoto bagged the Grammy in the Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album category.

The album explores ancient Vedic chants with melodic flute and resonant cello, creating a soundscape that fosters mindfulness, self-discovery, and connection. Rooted deeply in Sanskrit mantras and classical ragas, it speaks across cultures, transcending religion and geography, offering listeners something rare: stillness, healing, and joy.

“Music opens you up without asking for permission,” says Chandrika softly, her countenance meditative. “You don’t come to it saying, ‘I want to be healed.’ You come because the sound is beautiful. And then, quietly, it does something to you.”

A performer who has mesmerised audiences at some of the world’s most iconic venues including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and World Culture Festivals across Europe and India, she considers music a portal rather than a performance - a belief that has shaped her entire creative journey.

Long before awards and global stages, music was already part of her bloodstream. Growing up in a traditional middle-class household in Chennai, India, sound filled the home from dawn. “My mother loved music and ensured it was a constant presence,” recalls Chandrika. Thus, radio stations played everything from Tamil film songs to Hindi melodies, chants to Western classics. Saturdays brought “listeners’ choice” programmes, introducing Western music into the mix. “It was osmosis,” she recalls of her introduction to music. “I wasn’t trained formally at first. I just absorbed.”

Equally formative was her grandfather’s influence on her. She credits him with opening her world far beyond the narrow lanes of a sheltered upbringing. “He made me read Shakespeare - all 37 plays,” she says with a smile. “[Thanks to literature] I had a vision of a vast world long before I ever saw it.”

That vision would become her compass.

It was also what allowed her to push back forcefully against the boundaries placed around her. When she wanted to attend Madras Christian College, one of the few institutions at the time offering a B.Com for women, her family refused. It was considered too “boyish,” too risky. Her response, when just out of school, was radical: she went on a hunger strike. “I was adamant,” she says matter-of-factly. Her family relented.

The pattern repeated itself when she earned admission to IIM Ahmedabad, one of the most prestigious business schools in the country. Again, resistance. Again, resolve. By then, she had learned something crucial: boundaries are often more imagined than real. “We are our own worst enemies,” she says. “The chatter inside our heads stops us long before the world does.”

Her ascent in the corporate world was extraordinary. After IIM Ahmedabad, she went on to build a formidable career, eventually becoming the first Indian-American woman partner at McKinsey & Company. But even as she mastered the language of global business at the highest level (quite like her sister Indra Nooyi, former CEO of Pepsico) music never left her.

According to a McKinsey report, Chandrika would often stay up until 4 in the morning, listening to Roberta Flack’s Quiet Fire, Neil Young’s Harvest, or Sergio Mendes’ Brasil 66 on repeat.

In hotel rooms across continents, after marathon negotiations and high-stakes deals, Chandrika would find her way to piano bars, listening, learning, absorbing. Brazilian music sharpened her Portuguese. French chansons refined her fluency. Music, for a long time, played on the margins until it demanded to move to the centre.

That shift came about 25 years ago, during what she describes as a “crisis of spirit.” On a flight back from Europe, facing yet another lucrative deal, she broke down. “I cried the whole way,” she says. “I started asking myself - why am I here? Is this it? More money, more deals?”

The answers didn’t come immediately. But the question changed everything.

She didn’t abandon business; she restructured her life. Travel reduced. Intensity recalibrated. Music moved from the sidelines to the soul of her days. She began studying rigorously, almost obsessively, with some of the greatest masters of Indian classical music: Pandit Jasraj, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, Shubhra Guha, Vijay Kichlu…. She begged for lessons, rearranged her life, used every possible gap - early mornings, late nights, flights - to practice. “If I was going to do something, I wanted to do it at the highest level. Not for performance. For understanding myself.”

Her first album, Soul Mantra, was composed almost incidentally for her father-in-law’s 90th birthday. Featuring the five-syllable chant Om Namah Shivaya, it went on to develop a huge following. Letters poured in from stories of healing, recovery, to peace and calmness. “I realised then,” she says, “that sound and vibration carry a wisdom we don’t fully understand.”

Triveni is the culmination of that realisation. True to its name, the album is a confluence of traditions, disciplines, and intentions.

The process though was not seamless. “There were debates, disagreements, moments of creative friction [with Wouter and Eru],” she admits with a laugh. But Chandrika was unwavering about certain principles: fidelity to pronunciation, respect for raga structures, honouring the sanctity of the chants. “Staying rooted is not a constraint,” she says. “It’s a responsibility.”

The music is clearly making waves: “The mantras evoke the vibrancy of life. The flute and cello tones, along with the heartbeat of the songs, create a heart-rending resonance with life, effortlessly leading us into a world of dreams and meditation,” praised Seiji Nishino, Professor of Psychiatry and sleep researcher at Stanford University.

Chandrika, who is as comfortable performing on stage as she is discussing business in the boardroom, believes business and music are not opposites. “Music taught me surrender, compassion, imperfection. Business taught me control and intensity.” Over time, the former softened the latter. “I don’t call myself a perfectionist anymore,” she says. “I say, I am perfection because I bring my best self to this moment. That takes away so much stress.”

Central to her evolution is meditation. Deep, disciplined, daily practice often more than three hours a day. Vipassana retreats. Stillness. Listening. “Meditation is listening.” It is here, she believes, that true guidance emerges, not from mentors alone, but from a larger consciousness. “The universe wants you to succeed,” she says, taking another sip of water. “You just have to get out of your own way.”

This philosophy informs her work with young people as well. As Artist-in-Residence with the Young People’s Chorus of New York, she has reimagined Sanskrit mantras in choral traditions, performed by children from diverse backgrounds across the world. Watching 800 young voices sing the Gayatri Mantra at Lincoln Center, she says, “felt like everything coming full circle”.