Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar


Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar or Tārāvirasiṃha Tulādhara, is a Nepalese artist and composer on the classical string instrument Sitar. Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar lives in Lalitpur, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

Training and musical work

After secondary school, Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar gave up a possible career in the trading company of his parent’s family in Kathmandu and started learning sitar. He developed a style which incorporated influences from his first teacher Laxmi Narayan Dangol, followed by his second teacher Narendra Batagu and earned his master's degree in music in Allahabad, India in 1974. Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar was leader and Associate Professor of the Sitar master class at Padma Kanya Multiple College under Tribhuvan University, Nepal, from 1974 until his retirement in 2006. He still continues in giving a classical North Indian Sitar class at Kathmandu University’s Department of Music in Bhaktapur. Earlier he played for seven years in the Royal Nepal Academy orchestra. Since 1994 he is also teaching the Sitar class of GEMS high school at Sanepa height, Lalitpur.
Together with Surendra Shresta and Prem Rana, Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar joined in 1984 the Nepalese band Sur Sudha with the aim of interpreting and presenting traditional Nepali music in the own country and to the world. With Sur Sudha he continued to collect traditional tunes from remote and rural areas of Nepal, from Terai region up to the villages high in the Himalayas, and to arrange these melodies for concerts on stages in Europe, India, Japan and the USA. With Rudra Lai Tamrakar on Tabla and Shree Badan Shrestha on Tanpura Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar also performs and interprets classical music from Nepal with the band “Annapurna Group” of Kathmandu. Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar gave charity performances as solo sitarist, recitals and workshops with students not only in Nepal and India, but also in Europe, Japan and the United States of America.

Recognition

He has been considered as individual Nepalese artist reference by the American Library Association. Tara Bir Singh Tuladhar has recorded several music albums, both solo and accompanied by other artists. Nepal Sitar, Sitar Kaasa, Symbol of Nepal and Festivals of Nepal are four of his most popular music albums. The solo album “Nepal Sitar” was recognized with the German award “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 1985. He also contributed to the multimedia music project "Playing for Change", which was created by the American producer and sound engineer Mark Johnson.

Discography