Album Notes

Techung is a Tibetan singer/songwriter living in exile in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is best known for his performances of traditional Tibetan music, dance, and opera under the name Tashi Dhondup Sharzur. He uses his childhood nickname, Techung, when performing as a solo artist. Whether performing in traditional or contemporary styles, Techung's dual goals are to revive Tibetan music in the Tibetan community and to expose the rich performing cultural tradition of his homeland to the world community.

Techung grew up in Dharamshala, India, where his family and tens of thousands of other Tibetans resettled from their native Tibet. Because of the limited educational opportunities open to young refugees in the 1970s, he was enrolled at age 9 in the newly formed Tibetan Dance and Drama School now known as the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA). In his 19 years of residency at the Institute, he studied all aspects of the Tibetan performing arts - folk, court, and religious music traditions - through the oral teaching tradition used by the venerated Tibetan elders with whom he was honored to study. He toured with TIPA in its first international tour as a leading child actor in 1975-76 and for many years afterwards. After emigrating to the U.S., he co-founded the San Francisco-based Chaksampa Tibetan Dance and Opera Company in 1989.



Techung's voice and music have been featured on the soundtracks of the IMAX film "Everest," the feature film "Windhorse," the documentary films "Stranger in My Native Land," "Tibet's Stolen Child," and His music was also featured on PSA's for the Milarepa Fund (promoting the 1999 Tibetan Freedom Concert), His music is currently featured on first ever Tibetan feature film “ Dreaming Lhasa” (www.whitecranefilms.com). His music has also been used in a DVD titled LIVING WISDOM WITH HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA by Don Farber and published by Sounds True (www.soundstrue.com).

In recent years, Techung had the honor to open for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s public speech in Costa Rica, Japan and USA. He has been the headliner at the biggest Tibetan Music Festival in exile, an annual event in south India that began in (www.gonpoentertainment.com). His album “Compilation of Tibetan Folk and Freedom Songs” and his song “Tashipai Dawa” (“The Auspicious Moon”) have both been nominated for the 2006 Just Plain Folks Music Award, granted by one of America’s largest grassroot music groups (www.jpfolks.com).