Born into a musical family, Shirsha Chakraborty has been singing ever since she figured out how to talk. After moving to Canada, her parents encouraged her to take Hindustani Classical vocal lessons from a young age, which equipped her with a lot of the skills needed to participate in a regional version of Indian Idol, as an international contestant, in 2008.
Returning from that incredible experience, Shirsha started taking “speech level singing” vocal technique lessons from Ryan Luchuck, and enrolled into the Regional Arts Program at Mayfield Secondary School, for voice. Since then, Shirsha has been performing on stages across Canada, the States, and in India. After high school, she travelled to Mumbai, India and won a national singing competition in 2014, judged by renowned singer and composer Mr. Shankar Mahadevan; as a reward, she recorded vocals on his wonderful composition, “Laadli”. That same year also performed with Bollywood sensation Ash King, and was invited by Grammy Award-Winning pianist and songwriter Laura Sullivan to sing in an incredible collaboration called “900 Voices”.
Last year, Shirsha made her Bollywood playback-singing debut alongside maestro Ustad Rashid Khan in the theme song of the movie Wedding Anniversary, called “Bidesia – the Stranger”. Currently, Shirsha is in her last year in the Bachelor of Music program at Humber, and can look back on fantastic experiences like performing with Christian McBride, Larry Goldings and Emily Claire Barlow. She is very excited to be working on her EP at Humber, and to release her music into the world in mid-2019.
Shirsha’s Jazzology Playlist
- “Butterfly” – Rajaton Song (2006)
- “Ella Fitzgerald” – Angel Eyes (Remastered Version – 2018)
- “Sabrina Claudio” – Unravel Me (2017)
- “Changes” – H.E.R. (2017)
- “Khwahishein” – Shreya Ghoshal (2012)
- “Don’t Blame Me” – Taylor Swift (2017)
- “Wind” – Laila Biali (2018)
- “Mirror” – Shirsh Chakraborty (2019)
Jazzology with Heather Bambrick can be heard Wednesdays at 9 pm.