He earned a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in 2006 from an appearance on From the Top, the nationally syndicated youth radio show. He became deeply interested in improvisation, both in jazz and classical Indian music, while he continued to study and perform Western classical music at such venues as Symphony Hall, Boston and Jordan Hall. At the Conservatory he studied with Tom Martin of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, while the sitar player Peter Row taught him the fundamentals of Indian classical performance. On graduating from the Conservatory in 2010 as a Bachelor of Clarinet Classical Performance, Classical Music, he was awarded a grant by the Frank Huntingdon Beebe Fund to pursue his ambition to adapt the clarinet to Indian classical performance. He was accepted as a student by the world-famous Hindustani flute player Hariprasad Chaurasia at his Vrindaban Gurukul in Mumbai in the summer of 2010.

Shankar has toured with Mata Amritanandamayi, performing with her bhajan ensemble in 12 major cities across the US, including Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, Toronto, and New York City. While on tour with Amma, he had the opportunity to perform with David Balakrishnan of the Turtle Island String Quartet and study with saxophonist George Brooks. Shankar recorded an album of his fusion compositions entitled Uplift, which was premiered on Amma’s 2009 US tour. Through benefit concerts and sales of the CD, he raised several thousand dollars, which was put towards a charity helping farmers in Southern India.

As a clarinetist, Tucker has shared the stage with such legendary artists as Zakir Hussain, Hariprasad Chaurasia, and Raghu Dixit and recorded with music director Amit Trivedi for Coke Studio (India) . His ensemble has had the distinction of performing at the White House Diwali function of 2012, hosted by Vice President Joe Biden. He was invited to play at the first Indo American Inaugural Ball hosted by the Indian Americans on January 20, 2013 in Washington, D.C., along with a group of singers that included Vidya & Vandana (the Iyer sisters) and Rohan Kymal.

Shankar Tucker was an invited speaker at TEDxGateway conference in Mumbai and TEDxCEG in Chennai. On June 9, 2013, he started a new project on Kickstarter, ‘Shankar’s New Album and Video Series’, to fund his upcoming tours and the album, Filament. The target was to pledge $20,000 before August 1, 2013, but due to his huge fan following, $34,055 was pledged in just 6 days.

In 2014, Vidya Iyer and he co-founded the ShrutiBox Music, Inc.

He debut album Filament was released on July 28, 2015.