JasdeepSingh Degun

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  • Sitar
  • Composer

About Jasdeep

RPS Instrumentalist Award Winner 2024 Songlines Music Awards Best Newcomer 2023 The Critics' Circle Music Awards 'Outstanding Achievement in Opera' 2022

"[Degun is] one of the most imaginative musicians in the land"
★★★★★ The Independent

"[Degun's work]...showcases the classical music of the subcontinent but also mixes, melds and modernises it."
★★★★ Financial Times

"...this is a man on an upward trajectory with a visionary talent and an extraordinary instrument in his hands."
★★★★ North West End UK

Jasdeep Singh Degun is a multi-award-winning sitarist, composer, arranger, and improviser, renowned for his extraordinary skill and creativity. A consummate soloist and collaborative artist, the Leeds-born virtuoso is reshaping the musical landscape with his unique ability to blend Indian classical music with contemporary influences.

Jasdeep is Artist in Residence at the Barbican Centre for the 2026-27 season, which includes a recital at the Darbar Festival, the world premiere of his new sitar concerto with BBC Symphony and Kirill Karabits, and a concert performance of his acclaimed opera Orpheus, with Opera North. The latter is also part of a UK-wide tour of the production. Other season highlights include Jasdeep’s debut with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Festival of Voice, as well as a chamber project with musicians from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and recitals at Wigmore Hall, Djangoly Hall Nottingham, Cambridge Music Festival and St John’s College Oxford. 

Recent engagements include debuts with Tampere Philharmonic and Chineke! Orchestra, as well as performances with Geneva Camerata, Fantasia Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble all featuring Jasdeep’s own compositions for sitar and orchestra. Other highlights include two BBC commissions: a work for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their '25 for 25' series, broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and a new composition for the BBC Concert Orchestra as part of PRS's New Music Biennial, with performances at St George's Hall, Bradford, and Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre. In recital, Jasdeep has performed at esteemed venues such as Kings Place, Southbank Centre, Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s, Westminster Abbey, WOMAD Festival, Nottingham’s Royal Hall. 

Under the guidance of Ustad Dharambir Singh MBE, Degun honed his skills in gayaki ang, a lyrical style of sitar playing that emulates the human voice. His debut album Anomaly, released in 2022 on Real World Records, showcases his ability to place the sitar in modern contexts while honouring its classical roots. In November 2025, Jasdeep released his second album with Real World, Jogkauns, which offers a deeply immersive listening experience, rooted in the Imdad-Khani gharana — the North Indian classical tradition in which Jasdeep has trained.

Jasdeep is based in Leeds, UK

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Edward Pascall

Edward Pascall

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Joy Pidsley

Joy Pidsley

Associate Artist Manager

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  • Scottish Ensemble

    Rheingau Musik Festival
    Jul 2026

    • The delicate, silvery tones of the sitar might well represent the moment when the cool of night sets in. During [Degun’s] improvisations in the solo section, the mood shifts to the shimmering heat of midday, eventually brought to a boiling point through the interplay with the strings. Indian rhythms on the tabla enchant the audience. The bittersweet, yearning sound of the sitar is contrasted here by a medieval-Oriental quality in the strings, creating a highly mystical effect and culminating in a standing ovation.

  • Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2024: 'Instrumentalist' Award Winner

    London
    Feb 2024

    • Sitar virtuoso Jasdeep Singh Degun makes history at Royal Philharmonic Society Awards British musician Jasdeep Singh Degun has said it is "an absolute honour" to become the first sitar player to win a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Degun, from Leeds, was named best instrumentalist at the prestigious classical music ceremony on Tuesday.... He composed and appeared in Orpheus, an acclaimed new version of Monteverdi's Orfeo combining Indian and Western classical music for Opera North, which was nominated for best large-scale composition.

  • Opera North: Jasdeep Singh Degun named Artist in Residence

    Leeds
    Jun 2022

    • Jasdeep Singh Degun announced as Opera North’s artist in residence: Raised in Leeds, Degun has an impressive background as a virtuoso performer and composer. His many performances in the UK and abroad include a late-night BBC prom at the Albert Hall, a concert for the United Nations opening in 2012 of the amphitheatre in Doha, Qatar, a sell-out performance in 2019 of music from his debut album Anomaly (released this month by Real World Records) at the Purcell Room in London, and a 2011 gig at Buckingham Palace!

  • Classical Music Interview - 'Sitar player Jasdeep Singh Degun on creating crossovers between Indian and Western classical music'

    Mar 2024

    • It’s the first time that a sitar player has been named Instrumentalist of the Year at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards in the category’s 34-year history – and Jasdeep Singh Degun is delighted. And shocked. ‘It was truly surprising,’ the British player tells me. ‘It doesn’t happen to Indian Classical musicians, especially someone like little old me from Leeds. I feel like they’re not just spotlighting me but the entire Indian Classical community.’ Jasdeep Singh Degun might be ‘very humbled’ by the award, but it’s fair to say he’s had a memorable year. It kicked off in September 2022 (when the RPS judging period opens) with Orpheus, produced by Opera North, where he was artist in residence, and South Asian Arts UK. This reimagining of Monteverdi’s Orfeo brought together Indian Classical and European Baroque traditions, setting the opera during a multi-cultural wedding in a Leeds back garden. It was, in the words of The Stage, an ‘outstanding cross-cultural success’ – and it was also shortlisted for the RPS’s Large-Scale Composition award this year. The rest of the season saw Degun tour his debut album Anomaly, release a single from Orpheus, be nominated for an Ivor Novello Award and, most importantly, ‘I got engaged as well!’

  • Opera North: Orpheus

    Oct 2022

    • It’s hard to overstate the significance of this production. Never before has such a bold bi-musical initiative been attempted, let alone brought so successfully to fruition. It did of course benefit from leadership by two of the most imaginative musicians in the land, and its musical marriage was indeed made in heaven. But it has now opened a path down which other musicians might follow.
★★★★★

    • “Sheer boldness of vision… an outstanding cross-cultural success.” ★★★★★

    • I would have liked to hear it all over again

    • The release of emotion at the end is – to use a word that frequently butts its way into discussion of this Orpheus – amazing. ★★★★★

    • The result isn’t just something which pulses with energy: it reforges elements from two traditions to create a music drama that excites and moves in equal measure. ★★★★★

    • A thought-provoking experiment, superbly performed by all
 ★★★★

    • This Orpheus has a special magic… a thing of joy.” “Jasdeep Singh Degun, the co-music director with Laurence Cummings, has written Indian classical music that responds to, reflects and riffs on the early baroque, creating something new and beautiful. ★★★★

    • The result is vividly colourful, moving and surprisingly immediate ★★★★

    • The crux of this work is the interweaving of ancient western music with contemporary performance of Indian classical music – much of it newly composed by co-music director and sitar virtuoso Jasdeep Singh Degun. For fusion (or crossover, or whatever name you prefer to give it) to be considered a true success, it has to meet two tests. Firstly, the music on each side has to be of the highest quality, so that devotees of each genre feel satisfied that the music they love has been presented at its best. Secondly, there is a higher bar. Devotees of each genre should be so fascinated and delighted by the other that they want to hear more of it. Orpheus meets both those tests magnificently. Rather than being a fusion, Orpheus is a thrilling celebration of renaissance opera and Indian classical music, of their commonality and their possibilities for interchange. ★★★★

    • Monteverdi and Jasdeep Singh Degun’s musical compositions are combined with the musing of two cultures and traditions which aren’t compromised but celebrates two worlds. ★★★★

    • As an experiment in combining and intertwining two different kinds of music, this is an ingenious and well accomplished success. ★★★★

    • Composer Jasdeep Singh Degun had to take two very different written musical languages and performance models and find common ground between them. His choice of the Monteverdi was not arbitrary. The florid vocal writing demanded by operatic superstars of the day fits well with the spontaneous, improvised singing style of the much earlier Indian classical music. On this evidence, there are enough notes common to both to allow melodic phrasing and harmonising together to communicate, as one, the emotion of each moment to any listener. Both languages convey the love and loss, joy and tragedy inherent in the tale; music at its best.

    • Opera North and South Asian Arts-UK join forces to make music worthy of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, a massive challenge, and they succeed beautifully. Jasdeep Singh Degun, composer and sitar player, weaves and melds European baroque music and Indian classical music into a coherent whole, equally respectful to both sources.

    • Monteverdi’s music is frequently enriched by the imitative and florid melodic style, and rhythmic invention, of the Indian classical tradition ★★★★

    • Anyone would be charmed by this production. ★★★★

  • Anomaly Album Review

    Apr 2022

    • Showcases the classical music of the subcontinent but also mixes, melds and modernises it. ★★★★

  • Jasdeep Singh Degun and the Scottish Ensemble

    The Queens Hall, Edinburgh
    Oct 2023 - Jan 2024

    • …this is a man on an upward trajectory with a visionary talent and an extraordinary instrument in his hands ★★★★

    • To merge different traditions and practices successfully and meaningfully takes intelligence, patience, respect and, perhaps most importantly, time! It was cheering that these qualities were displayed in this performance, which was most definitely a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

    • ★★★★

  • Arya: Orchestra of Opera North

    Feb 2020 - Mar 2020

    • Jasdeep Singh Degun’s Arya ... was striking in his ability to be both Indian classical and Western classical and sound at ease with both. Arya proved to be thoroughly accessible... it always put Degun’s virtuosity on the sitar to the service of the overall concept. Intense, but never troubled, it ended by fading into serenity.

    • Constructing such a bridge takes careful, patient work on both sides – and the bi-musical training Jasdeep possesses to sustain that work. There is vital expressive potential in the dialogue between Indian and Western classical idioms, and it is urgent – at a time when politics is building cultural barriers rather than bridges – that we recognise the importance of that potential to the development of both traditions in the UK.

    • It manages, as if by sleight of Jasdeep Singh Degun’s hand, to simultaneously embrace simplicity and complexity in its extraordinary delivery, opening as it does what is a unique new sound to a potentially brand new audience.

    • This concerto was an absolute delight, it wasn’t a case of dumbing down Indian music for Western ears, more raising the level of what we are used to and introducing us to the joys of the instrument and the ways in which it can be used. I can’t praise this work, and its composer, highly enough.

    • Sitting cross-legged, Jasdeep’s whole body was involved in bringing the sitar to life. The combinations of notes were sometimes breathtakingly fast, sharp and complex, and sometimes gentle enough to vibrate the strings into humming. He seemed to manage both; everything in between and the long spells of sustained playing with ease.

Discography