Shanno Khurana

A disciple of the doyen of the gharana, Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan (d. 1964), she is known for performing rare bandish and raag, though her singing style includes genres like khayal, tarana, thumri, dadra, tappa, to chaiti and bhajan.

But her interest in music grew in her early years, when she saw her brother learning from musicologist and vocalist Pandit Raghunath Rao Musalgaonkar, a disciple and nephew of Raja Bhaiya Poonchwale of Gwalior gharana.

Singh helped her get confidence as she started touring to Turkey, Iran, Greece and other areas as a part of cultural delegations sponsored by Government of India.

He taught her the purab-ang Thumri, and later insisted her on joining the Indira Kala Sangeet University at Khairagarh, Madhya Pradesh, where eminent musicologist and teacher S. N. Ratanjankar who has remained principal of Bhatkhande Music Institute, was the Vice-Chancellor at the time.

Finally, at the request of Singh, she trained under the doyen of Rampur-Sasawan gharana, singer Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan,[9] who was then teaching at the Bharatiya Kala Kendra in Delhi.

This extensive and varied training helped her expand her musical repertoire to include rare raagas and bandish, besides khayal, tarana, thumri, dadra, chaiti and bhajan, besides tappas and jangra, a folk form of Rajasthan.

[6] Her operas include Heer Ranjha (1956) with Sheila Bhatia, in which she also played the lead role,[12] Sohni Mahiwal in Punjabi (1963), where in Ustad Mushtaq Hussain, son of her guru sang with her, "Jahan Ara" in Urdu (1970), Chitralekha (1973, Hindi), based on the story by Bhagwati Charan Verma and directed by B.V. Karanth has music composed on 80 classical ragas,[12] and "Sundari", based on the novel by the same name written by Bhai Vir Singh in 1979.