Concert pianist Neil Nongkynrih's first rendezvous with opera – Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten at London's English National Opera House, in 1990 – was unfulfilling. In fact, he hated it. 'The first time it did not hit me – didn't sound profound to me. But gradually I grew to love it,' smiles Nongkynrih, who grew up in Meghalaya but studied music at Guildhall School of Music and Trinity College in Britain. He has since come to renown as a concert pianist and versatile teacher, working on an eclectic range of music including piano. One of his pupils – the English musician Philip Selway, best known as the drummer for the rock group Radiohead – has won the US Grammy Award multiple times.
Nongkynrih's first public piano performance in the UK was in the presence of British royalty, which inevitably led to additional European recitals. But his inquietude eventually brought him back to his roots in the Indian Northeast. There, he branched out into composing, writing music for both opera and choir. In 2001, he took a sabbatical, coming back to his hometown of Shillong after 13 years in London. There, suddenly, he realised his sojourn in England was over: It was time to give back to his own society.
He set up the Shillong Chamber Choir in 2001. (He is also the artistic director and guest conductor of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, considered one of the finest in the world.) The choir has a unique repertoire that includes such Western standards as Handel, Bach and Gershwin, and has proven able to enthral audiences in Vienna, London, Geneva, Poland, China and elsewhere. The singers have been trained for musicals, and have sung in German, Italian, Chinese and French, as well as Malayalam and Bengali. Their latest accolade was a silver medal in the folklore category at the World Choir Championships in July 2009 in South Africa. There, the choir won for an opera composed and directed by Nongkynrih, which revolves around an ancient Khasi folktale, 'Sohlyngngem', a traditional love story about a girl who turns into a bird. Set in modern times, the opera subtly interweaves political and social undercurrents (such as the matrilineal system of Khasi society and its clashes with modern-day Christian doctrines), community life, universal human feelings such as unrequited love, and even globalisation.
It was in a moment of creative stasis, Nongkynrih says, that he first decided to experiment with opera in his mother tongue, Khasi, which he laments is one of India's 'dying languages'. Today, less than 900,000 people are estimated to speak Khasi, nearly all of whom live in Meghalaya, while the convent-educated youths of Shillong would rather speak in English. Further, with the media boom, it is the glut of Western culture that today inevitably enthuses the youth. As such, Nongkynrih says he is now planning to focus more extensively on opera in local languages, including one in Hindi that he hopes can be a commercial success.