One of India's finest choirs has once again mesmerized an audience with a rendition of two old Indian classics -- "Ye Dosti" and "Ajeeb Dastan" -- in Jodhpur's Umaid Bhawan Palace.
The Shillong Chamber Choir performed a splendid medley of the two songs from Sholay (1975) and Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (1960) respectively at the 'Jodhpur One World Retreat '15' on July 11.
Watch the performance here:
The choir sings a variety of music ranging from Bollywood to Western Classical. The Shillong Chamber Choir has performed in Europe, the UK, Canada, the US, South Korea, West Asia and South-East Asia over the years. It had performed before US President Barack Obama at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2010. The choir won the TV show India's Got Talent in 2010.
In March this year, superstar Amitabh Bachchan joined the Shillong Chamber Choir and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra to sing 'Vandemataram'. The founder of the Shillong Chamber Choir, Neil Herbert Nongkynrih, won the Padma Shri earlier this year for his contribution to arts.
In an interview to Mint, the 44-year-old had said that coming back to Shillong was a huge decision and he doesn't regret it.
At 15, Nongkynrih won a piano student’s passage to London’s acclaimed conservatory Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the prestigious Trinity College, where he found Europe’s foremost pianists, Phillip Fowke and Katharina Wolpe, as teachers. Nongkynrih lived in Europe for 15 years before finally returning to Shillong.
In 2002, he started his "home school", where music was taught alongside regular courses of study. "Most students have come from troubled families or suffered some sort of mental turmoil. Some parents turned in their children for them to be a “good human being”," noted a Mint report.
Here are their other performances:
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