Ayush Ghosh
Ayush Ghosh still remembers picking up the sitar at age five: “I loved the sound and the feel of it.”
The 17-year-old Grade 12 student now takes that love and shares it with others. A sitar prodigy, he is composing music that melds Western and Eastern influences, plays the trumpet in Sir Winston Churchill’s symphony and jazz bands, teaches at the Academy of Indian Classical Music that he helped establish and performs to raise money for charities.
In 2017, Ghosh was awarded an Immigrants of Distinction youth award to add to numerous other honours and scholarships. This fall, he hopes to start university robotics studies after his high school team qualified for the 2017 VEX Robotics World Championship.
The connection between music and robotics (the scientific design, construction, operation and use of robots) is clear in the teen’s mind. “They are both creative and both improve people’s lives.”
Both are important to Ghosh, who came to Canada from India with his parents when he was eight.
He believes that just as music has helped mould his life, it can bring others together.
“Any celebration does not feel complete without music. When we are happy or sad, we listen to music.”
Ghosh is the world’s youngest professional classical sitar player and besides playing around the world and at numerous solo recitals in Canada, he performed at ArtBox to raise money for the Fort McMurray wildfire evacuees and has raised thousands of dollars for aspiring musicians in India.
He touts Canada’s diversity as he blends Eastern and Western classical music on the same stage, "without losing the purity of either genre. This year, he will release his first album Bridging Borders.
“I wish to inspire youth through my music. I believe this will bring harmony and peace in the community.”
And while robotics — which Ghosh says involves everything from clearing nuclear waste to development of prosthetic arms and legs — is his career passion, his future will always include music.
“I can’t live without it.”