Vandana Vishwas

Hindustani Classical

From being a child prodigy to being a Sangeet Visharad and an All India Radio artist as a teenager, to performing on a national stage that served as the launching platform for many playback singers in Bollywood, to giving it all up to pursue a career in Architecture and shaping the skylines of cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Dubai and Toronto for more than 22 years, to restarting her music by composing, singing and producing two full length music albums while still working full time in Architecture, to finally giving the lucrative career in Architecture up to dedicate full attention to music, and re-establishing herself as a leading, critically acclaimed award winning World-musician in the south Asian genre, to producing 'Parallels', her third album that stayed at top 3 spots on Roots Music Report World charts for 20 straight weeks, Indo-Canadian - Vandana Vishwas is a musician par excellence who has no contemporary parallel.Born in Lucknow, the historic north Indian city known for its arts & culture and raised in the pristine Chhattisgarh province of central India, Vandana was a prodigal singer since the age of four singing extremely complex melodies with ease, prompting her parents to enroll her for Indian-classical vocal lessons. She began learning from Pandit Parashuram Sharma at age five, and later from Mrs. Vimala Soni. She earned a ‘Sangeet Visharad’ (a bachelor’s degree in Indian classical music) by the time she was sixteen. By then Vandana was already a contract artist with All India Radio and had started composing her own original music. She completed her regular schooling in tandem within this time. All this despite an unfortunate medical negligence in her infancy that resulted in a lifelong condition of permanent partial immobility and chronic and acute pain for her.Over the course of the next five years spent earning her bachelor’s degree in architecture and for a few years thereafter, Vandana was a contract artist with All India Radio for around ten years, where she sang songs composed by herself and her mentor Mr. D.K. Gandhe. During one such recording session, she was heard by renowned Ghazal maestro brothers Ustaad Ahmed and Mohammed Hussain. They were so impressed by her voice that they took her under their tutelage and taught her the intricacies of ghazal singing. Learning the romantic and expressive style of rendering Ghazals from Mr. Gandhe and Hussain brothers shaped her unique vocal style.