Page 65 - RPS Awards 2024 Coverage Book

“Of the 19 individual performers and composers shortlisted, 42 per cent
represent the global majority, including cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Music
Director of the Birmingham Opera Company Alpesh Chauhan, and sitar
player Jasdeep Singh Degun,” a press note by RPS read.

In a post shared on X, Leeds-born Degun thanked his teacher for supporting
him in his musical journey.

“Very surreal to announce that I’ve been nominated for two @RoyalPhilSoc
Awards! For ‘Best Instrumentalist’ and ‘Large Scale Composition’. I am very
thankful to my teacher Ustad Dharambir Singh and to the numerous
individuals and organisations that have supported me over the years,” Degun
said.

His work as a composer, co-music director, and soloist in the highly praised
opera ‘Orpheus’, commissioned by Opera North in partnership with South
Asian Arts-UK, earned him a nomination for the Large-Scale Composition
Award, according to a press note.

Orpheus garnered five-star reviews and earned Degun a 2022 Critics’ Circle
Music Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Opera”.

His other awards and acknowledgments include the Songlines Best
Newcomer Award, an Asian Achievers Award, an Asian Media Award, and an
Ivor Novello Classical Award nomination for Best Stage Work.

Learning under the guidance of Ustad Dharambir Singh MBE, Degun has
performed all over the world in prestigious venues, including Buckingham
Palace, the Amphitheatre in Doha, and Westminster Abbey at the Royal
Commonwealth Service 2022, in the presence of the British Royal Family and
Prime Minister.

Degun trained intensively in India under maestro Ustad Shujaat Khan in
2010 and studied as an International Scholar at the prestigious Sangeet
Research Academy, Kolkata, under the guidance of Pandit Partho Chatterjee
and Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty in early 2016.

Birmingham-born Chauhan’s debut album featuring orchestral works by
Tchaikovsky was released with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on
Chandos Records in June 2023.

He entered the Royal Northern College of Music in 2008 to study the cello
before pursuing the prestigious Master’s Conducting Course.