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Brisbane-based musician Tenzin Choegyal first met legendary composer Philip Glass in 2011.
Choegyal had no idea who Glass was – arguably the world’s most famous modern classical composer, widely recognised for film scores such as The Truman Show and Koyaanisqatsi. But Glass had certainly heard of Choegyal, and invited him to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall in the Tibet House Annual Benefit Concert.
This longstanding event, which Glass curates, brings traditional Tibetan musicians together with major pop acts to raise funds with the aim of preserving Tibetan culture.
Choegyal has been invited back 11 times, and has worked with Glass between New York and Brisbane on projects such as the soundtrack to a feature-length documentary, The Last Dalai Lama? In March, he again joined Glass on stage at Carnegie Hall, with the likes of Elvis Costello, Elysian Fields, Kate Pierson and Robert De Niro.
This September, he will perform Be the Sky, an album he co-composed with Glass, at Brisbane Festival. Featuring texts from the Tibetan yogi Milarepa and prayers by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Be the Sky is a reflective song cycle built around themes of exile, which are close to Choegyal’s heart.
“The music carries me to places I can no longer physically go, especially Tibet,” he says. “Although I live far from my homeland, Tibet resides within me, and this album became a way of returning through music,” he says.
The child of nomads, Choegyal fled the Chinese occupation of Tibet with his family in the early 1970s. They went to Nepal, where his father died, and his mother sent him on to the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, northern India, where the Dalai Lama has found refuge since 1960.
It was here that Choegyal took up his parents’ mantle and became a musician – his father played the lingbu (transverse bamboo flute), and his mother’s traditional chanting is one of his earliest memories. He also learnt to play the dranyen, a Tibetan lute.
In 1997, he resettled in Brisbane.
“One of my very first experiences was performing at the Woodford Folk Festival,” he recalls, “where I was embraced by audiences and fellow musicians in a way that made me feel I had found another home.”
Written for strings, saxophones, guitars, piano, children’s choir, the lingbu and dranyen, Be the Sky evokes many of Glass’s previous compositions rooted in Tibetan culture, such as his score for the Martin Scorsese-directed Dalai Lama biopic Kundun and his solo piano piece Mad Rush.
The 70-minute Be the Sky captures a unique fusion of Western and Eastern musical philosophies, balancing the propulsive, repetitive arpeggios of Glass’ minimalist style with the graceful, high arcs of Choegyal’s Tibetan singing.
This premiere in Brisbane is especially meaningful for Choegyal, as the city has fostered much of his artistic and personal growth.
“I found an incredibly generous artistic community here, where I could share my stories through my songs and music with much freedom,” he says.
“I am super-looking forward to presenting it in my home.”
Be The Sky was released as an album in November 2025, featuring refugee children from the Tibetan Children’s Village as well as Glass associate, Nashville-born musician Alex Ring Gray, who will also be performing in Brisbane.
“We chose to release the album as a way of honouring two extraordinary people who have profoundly shaped my life: His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and Philip Glass,” Choegyal says.
“Both entering their 90th year, their wisdom, compassion and generosity – expressed through their lives and their art – continue to inspire me every day.”
Choegyal says his relationship with Glass has become much more collaborative and fluid in recent years, with some creative material for Be the Sky deriving from his own earlier compositions, while other parts were developed exclusively with Glass.
“In many cases,” he adds, “this material evolved further through performers we trusted deeply.”
One such performer is Vanessa Tomlinson, a percussionist and director of the Queensland Conservatorium, where Be the Sky will receive its one-night-only performance on September 7.
“The music in Be the Sky will be both familiar and new,” Tomlinson says, “with some of it being improvised in real time in front of you, and parts of it refined with some of the best emerging musicians in Australia: students at the Queensland Conservatorium.”
Tomlinson is eager to emphasise the beguiling qualities of Choegyal’s unique voice when paired with Glass’ stately, highly structured musical forms.
“This is music to listen to, to dream to, to allow yourself to be mesmerised by,” she promises. “Choegyal is a master of the mountaintop, with his voice soaring and cascading from the stage, filling every corner of the concert hall.”
Tomlinson says Choegyal is a rare musician who is at once at home on the world’s biggest stages and also happy to perform in Brisbane at humble venues such as The Cave Inn with local improvisers.
“Tenzin has orbited my life in Brisbane for the past 20 years,” she says.
“Having a bridge between Philip Glass and the Queensland Conservatorium through Tenzin is such a great opportunity for students, staff and Brisbane audiences.”
As a Tibetan artist rooted in the wisdom traditions of Tibetan nomads, Choegyal says a sense of lineage is always present in his music.
“It lives in the way I sing, in the stories I carry, and in the emotions that naturally surface.
“As Philip Glass would say, ‘if you hold on to your lineage, you are never really alone’.”
Be the Sky will be performed at the Conservatorium Theatre, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Monday, September 7, 7.30pm.
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