About
Arjan Singh is a composer, performer, and conductor based in New York City who creates art to understand and contextualize his relationship with time, nature, and his culture. His music invites audiences to challenge their own perception of time, and reflect on their connection to the natural and unnatural environments that surround them.
Arjan specializes in creating multidisciplinary works of art and regularly collaborates with filmmakers, game developers, dancers, and more, including partnerships with Juggernaut Entertainment, Boston Conservatory Dance, and UNICEF. Arjan’s most recent project is Plant Music, a project in which he builds instruments that use plants to make sound by collecting electronic data from plants to trigger sound effects and music. Other recent projects include Water Birds, a series of pieces for solo woodwind instruments and electronics inspired by birds that live in aquatic environments; Dil-e-Nadaan (Israel-Pellman Prize Honorable Mention), a string quartet recently read by the JACK Quartet; and Song, Shadow, a score written for a short film by the same name created by Remington Strecker and Cambell Thibo.
Indian Classical music plays a key role in Arjan’s writing and performance practice. He grew up studying Indian Classical violin with Dr. Sisirkana Dhar Choudhury, and it is such training that informs his compositional decisions in regards to harmony, structure, and pacing. Arjan also continues to write music strictly in the Indian Classical style, such as in his Alaap Cycle, a series of alaaps written for a variety of solo performers on different instruments.
As a performer, Arjan plays trombone (performances with the 8-Bit Big Band, Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra, and Motion Picture Orchestra), violin (featured soloist at Jordan Hall and Apple Headquarters), and woodwinds (bass clarinet with the BCSO, flute and clarinet with the Berklee Composers Sinfonietta). He has also served as a conductor for the CMC Festival Orchestra and Scoring Sessions Program. Arjan is currently learning trumpet and the bassoon and hopes to add both to his arsenal soon. Aside from his work as a conductor and performer, Arjan also works as an administrator, serving as the executive chair of the Mannes Composers Concert Committee as well as an Organizer of the Game Audio Workshop, an organization he co-founded to establish connections between student game composers, developers, and the game audio industry. He previously served as executive director of the Motion Picture Orchestra, president of the Classical Musicians Coalition at Berklee, and supervisor of the Berklee Core Music Tutoring program.
Arjan recently graduated summa cum laude from the Berklee College of Music with a dual Bachelors Degree in Composition and Film Scoring, where he studied with Alla Cohen, Gregory Glancey, and Marti Epstein. During his time at Berklee, he was awarded with the Jeronimas Kacinkas Award as well as the Ralph Peterson Scholarship for outstanding compositional achievement. Currently, Arjan is pursuing a Masters Degree in Composition at the Mannes School of Music, where he was awarded the Martinu Composition Prize for his work Live Salmon, in recognition of “demonstrating a unique voice and originality in musical composition for orchestra”.