In the 30 years that have passed since she made her high-profile concert debut at age 13, Anoushka Shankar has released 10 solo albums, earned 11 Grammy Award nominations and performed multiple times at New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Albert Hall and other landmark concert venues.

Along the way, she has collaborated with her legendary father, the late Indian music icon Ravi Shankar, and with everyone from Herbie Hancock, Jacob Collier and Patti Smith to the London Philharmonic, Norah Jones (who is Shankar’s half- sister) and former Beatle George Harrison, one of the closest friends and champions of Anoushka’s dad.

But even now, she recalls her first concert with a combination of awe, fright and delight. “It was terrifying, just terrifying!” said Shankar. “But, afterward,” she added with a laugh, “it was bizarrely wonderful!”

Her trepidation and subsequent delight were perfectly understandable for Anouska, whose new album, “Chapter III: We Return to Light,” is out now.

Her 1995 stage debut took place in Siri Fort, the most prestigious performance venue in India’s capital city of New Delhi. The setting was her famed father’s all-star 75th birthday concert. Ravi Shankar had long been hailed as India’s greatest and most internationally celebrated composer, band leader and cultural champion.

To make matters more intimidating, she was featured as a soloist on the sitar, a deviously difficult instrument that has 19 strings and whose undisputed master was her famous dad. Anoushka’s accompanist that night was Zakir Hussain, one of the world’s foremost tabla drum players. And because of her father’s fame and the significance of his 75th birthday, there was intense media coverage.

“My heart started beating out of my chest as the concert progressed, because I knew we were coming closer and closer to my solo in the middle of the show ... The next day after the concert, every major publication in India had a picture of me and my father, and there were some proper reviews of my debut. So, it had that weight and pressure to it, which was hard to ignore.”

Anoushka’s self-titled debut album was released in 1998, one year before her high school graduation. It was produced by her father and exclusively featured music he composed.

Her North American tour this year is in support of her 14th album, which completes a trilogy that also includes “Chapter 1: Forever, For Now” and “Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn.”

While Anoushka’s work is still rooted in the age-old classical traditions of India, her trilogy deftly incorporates elements of trance, ambient and other more contemporary Western electronic music styles to create an often-melancholic old world/new world synthesis.

This interview Shankar has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Having seen you and your father perform together, it felt like a musical baton was being handed to you by the world’s greatest and most famous Indian classical music artist. That is an awesome responsibility, but also a unique opportunity to extend the way the sitar is heard and perceived by audiences, to take it to the next step.

A: One of the great excitements I’ve had in this last decade or so has been very much thinking consciously about how the sitar is perceived and how it can be, well, “used” sounds a bit casual, but what kind of lives can it live? What sound worlds can it exist in? And that’s been something that’s opened up my musical experience hugely. So, yeah, I think thinking in terms of the evolution of the instrument, which has been something that’s really helped me find direction in the kind of music I want to make. Because I think, so often, the sitar is so closely synonymous with Indian classical music, which makes perfect sense. But the piano is also very synonymous with Western classical music ... The instrument itself (whether sitar or piano) — with all respect to the heritage — also can be so many other things.

Q: Is it a balancing act, in that some people look to you as representing this very rich historic tradition that your father helped bring to the world? And at the same time, you’re kind of representing the future possibilities?

A: I try very hard not to think in those ways, to be honest, only because there were so many ways of thinking that were kind of imposed on me from when I was very young. And because I do have quite thin skin and a people-pleasing personality, to some extent, I realized very early on — in my teenage years and early 20s — how very difficult and impossible it would ever be to try and fulfill any of those possible, really lofty ideals. Like, what does it mean to carry a tradition? What does it mean to break from a tradition? What does it mean to follow footsteps? What does it mean to live up to a legend? All of these concepts are so vague, in a way, and I could see as I traveled from one place to another that perceptions would change. You know, am I a torch bearer, or am I a tradition breaker, or am I a pioneer, or am I a silver-spoon kid? I just knew that would never work (to think that way).

Q: So, what did you decide?

A: I just got really clear that I have to work from a very internally led space of what feels truthful to me as a musician. And if it has that artistic integrity as a seed, then whatever it is I do will be alright, at least for me and at least for some people, and that’s all I can do.

Q: There are some artists who, by virtue of playing the instruments they play, have inspired young people to do the same. The sitar is a lot less easy to simply take up than a drum or banjo. But has there been any cause and effect? Have you seen younger artists who cite you as an inspiration?

A: Yeah, I have, and it’s genuinely mind-blowing. There are a fair number of messages I get on social media, from girls in particular, where they’ll say they picked up the sitar because they saw me play. I don’t have a lot of students, but one of my few current students that I teach was a girl I met a few years ago. And I’ll never forget it, because it was still at the time when everyone was wearing masks, and she had a mask covering her face, but just full tears in her eyes. I learned later from her mother that she’d basically, from when she was a little girl, taught herself to play sitar by watching my YouTube videos. That was just so overwhelmingly humbling and incredible ... There is that kind of ripple effect.