Teacher

Sharmila G. Lash is sought after as a jazz and classical singer, as well as for her voice-over work. She is a regular chorister with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and has sung with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and SF new music ensemble Volti. She is a private voice instructor, works as a session singer for film and television, and has recorded middle grade and young adult audiobooks. Teaching steadily since 2004, she incorporates her vast professional experience to help guide students to find their own voice.

Sharmila began her music studies at a very young age, starting piano lessons at age six and singing lessons at age eleven. She was a music student at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and continued on to study classical voice at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she discovered her passion for jazz. Since then, she has been a featured performer at the Jazz Education Network Conference, DiMiero Jazz Festival, American Choral Directors Association Conference, and Festival Napa Valley, to name a few.

She has performed on the some of the most prestigious stages in California, led by Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Zubin Mehta, and others, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, Volti, Carmen Lundy, Don Shelton, Billy Childs, Luciana Souza, Anne Akiko Myers, as well as with many other top jazz and classical musicians in both Northern and Southern California.

Sharmila has extensive experience singing in many languages, including Latin, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Bengali, and Swedish, among others. Her debut solo jazz album If Music Be the Food of Love, featuring guitarist Larry Koonse and bassist Kevin Axt, showcases her affinity for exploring songs that stray from the usual jazz repertoire, like the title track by Baroque composer Henry Purcell, a song by the alternative rock band The Cure, and a Bengali folk song.

As a session musician, Sharmila has sung for several film and TV soundtracks for 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, and Warner Bros. Pictures. Some chorus credits include Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Turning Red, Ms. Marvel, and Superman. Sharmila is a member of AGMA, SAG-AFTRA, and ASCAP.