Yungchen Lhamo
Yungchen Lhamo was born and raised in Lhasa, Tibet. Her name, meaning 'Goddess of Melody,' was given to her by a lama at birth. In 1989 she made the arduous month-long, 1,200-mile journey across the Himalayas to Dharamsala, India, in pursuit of her dreams, before later settling in Australia. There, her debut album, Tibetan Prayer, won the Australian Recording Industry Award (ARIA) for Best World Music Album in 1995.
Signed to Peter Gabriel's Real World Records, she released three further albums: Tibet, Tibet (1996), Coming Home (1998), and Ama (2006), the latter featuring Annie Lennox and Joy Askew. Her fifth album, Tayatha (2013), was a meditational collaboration with Russian classical pianist Anton Batagov. Her sixth album, Awakening (2022), released through Six Degrees Records, explores compassion-based spirituality in modern life, with a distinctive Spanish influence and a song in Mandarin.
A tireless performer across all five continents, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Sydney Opera House, the Louvre, and The Vatican, among many others, and has shared the stage with artists including Philip Glass, Annie Lennox, Peter Gabriel, U2, and Sir Paul McCartney. Her voice has also graced several film soundtracks, most notably Seven Years in Tibet (1997).
