Tenzin Choegyal

Tibetan singer-songwriter, activist, cultural ambassador and Grammy nominee Tenzin Choegyal is one of a handful of artists keeping Tibet’s music alive in the freedom of exile.

A son of Tibetan nomads, Tenzin feels a particular connection to the music of the wandering people of the Tibetan plateau. He fondly recalls his father’s flute playing and his mother’s beautiful singing as she went about her work, and attributes much of his passion to those early influences.

Tenzin and his family were forced into exile in India as they fled the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Growing up in the Tibetan refugee community in Dharamsala, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama actively encourages his people to preserve their culture through language, religion and the arts, Tenzin first began to explore his musical talents.

Tenzin is a master of traditional Tibetan instruments, the lingbu (bamboo flute), the Tibetan nomad’s instrument of choice, and the dranyen (3-stringed Tibetan lute). But he is best known for his extraordinary vocal ability and his mastery of droklu, the nomadic music of his parents.

Tenzin’s collaborative albums include The Last Dalai Lama? with Philip Glass (2019) and the 2021 Grammy-nominated album Songs from the Bardo with Laurie Anderson and Jesse Paris Smith - a moving interpretation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. His most recent album, Yeshi Dolma, is the result of a 10-year collaboration with Camerata, Queensland’s chamber orchestra.

As an artist Tenzin sees himself as a storyteller, sharing his own story, the communal story of his people and the stories of all humanity. For him music is universal, expansive and spontaneous, unrestricted by borders, like clouds drifting freely in infinite space.

But, above all, while never wavering in his efforts to keep Tibet’s cultural traditions alive, Tenzin firmly believes an even more precious legacy is that of Tibetan warm-heartedness, as personified by Tibet’s spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama.