sharad gurung

Sharad Gurung is a composer, performer and arranger born in Kathmandu, Nepal. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA on the prestigious Lee and Susan Berk Scholarship Award, becoming the first Nepali to receive a degree in Jazz Piano Performance from a Western institution. Sharad comes from a highly respected musical family. His father Amber Gurung is considered the founding father of contemporary Nepali music, and had the honor of being commissioned by the government of Nepal to compose the country’s new national anthem. Sharad Gurung has been profiled in the international press, including in publications such as the International Herald Tribune. Sharad ushered in formal jazz and Western music education in Nepal through private music lessons, and as the director of Nepal Sangeet Vidhyalaya, a Norwegian government-funded music school in Kathmandu. Sharad has written music widely for radio and television, and has arranged music for some of Nepal’s leading artists, including the highest-selling pop album “Crossroads.” Sharad was comissioned by the government of Nepal to arrange the new national anthem of Nepal. He represented Nepal at the Golden Kite International Song Competition in Malaysia in 1990. Sharad scored the music for Nepal’s first feature-length digital film “Kagbeni,” based on the short story “The Monkey’s Paw” by the nineteenth century British horror author W. W. Jacobs. The soundtrack pioneered a Hollywood-style scoring in the history of Nepali film music. “Kagbeni” was showcased at the presitigious Berklee Film Scoring Department. Sharad was the musical director for the Peace Day Concert held in Kathmandu in 2003 in response to the violent political conflict that plagued his homeland Nepal for a decade. The concert featured leading artists from Nepal, and called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. For millennia Nepal has had a shared Buddhist culture and extensive links with neighboring Tibet. Sharad arranged, performed and recorded two unique albums of ancient chants by the Tibetan Bon monks of the Triten Norbutse Monastery of Kathmandu, an ancient tradition predating Buddhism in Tibet: “Melodic Wisdom: Songs of the Garuda” and “Pacifying Negativity: The Practice of Red Garuda.”