Born in 1926 in Singapore, Alex Abisheganaden is perhaps the most important and versatile guitar maestro in Singapore’s history. Despite working full-time in the teaching industry for 36 years, the classical guitarist, double bassist, composer, singer and actor has, for more than 60 years, played and taught the guitar with unflagging dedication, motivated by his love for the instrument and his desire to spread the joy of music to everyone. For his efforts—which include creating a 26-episode television programme on guitar-playing, publishing two guitar textbooks, composing numerous popular, classical and fusion works for the guitar, collaborating with diverse instrumentalists and founding and leading the Singapore Classical Guitar Society and Singapore’s first guitar orchestra, the Guitar Ensemble of the National University of Singapore—Abisheganaden received a Cultural Medallion in 1988.

Alexander Abisheganaden was born in 1926 in Singapore, the sixth of seven children in a musical family. He taught himself to play the guitar at the age of 15 armed only with a guitar handed down from his older brother Gerard and a guitar handbook, the Ellis's Thorough School for Guitar, improving his skill so much that he attained a technical proficiency equivalent to a grade six guitar player.

During the Japanese occupation of Singapore in the 1940s, a teenage Abisheganaden found work as a guitarist in an Indian orchestra for a Japanese-run radio station. When the war ended, he finished his Senior Cambridge examinations and began teaching English at a primary school while studying at the Teachers’ Training College.

During that time, Abisheganaden—then a guitarist with the Singapore Junior Symphony Orchestra—began learning to play the double bass from resident Hungarian cellist Feri Krempl. He quickly mastered the instrument and, in 1949, became a double bassist for the orchestra and the Singapore Chamber Ensemble. Over a decade later in 1960, Abisheganaden—now a school principal—became the first Southeast Asian recipient of a Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music for performance on the double bass. He also attained a grade eight certification for guitar and voice. The following year, he received a government study grant for the Royal College of Music in London. He moved to the UK and studied singing, double bass and guitar, with famous Australian guitarist John Williams as his teacher.

Not long after his return to Singapore, Abisheganaden became an Inspector of Schools at the Ministry of Education. In 1967, he founded the Singapore Classical Guitar Society, which he would lead for the next 25 years. Soon after, the Minister of Education at that time, Dr Goh Keng Swee, commissioned Alex to create a music education programme that would be broadcast on television. The result was the 26-episode Music Making with the Guitar broadcast on national Education Television from 1970 to 1971. This music programme was the first of its kind on Singapore television, and it was accompanied by two guitar textbooks written by Abisheganaden.

Through the decades that followed, Abisheganaden helped to establish TheatreWorks, sang and acted in plays and operas, and performed collaboratively with a diverse range of musicians. But mostly, he kept on contributing to the Singapore music scene.

He composed popular songs such as Salute to Singapore which won the National Theatre Trust’s national songwriting competition in 1976, and Read for the Future for the National Book Development Council of Singapore in 1986. He also wrote pieces for the guitar including Reverie, Dance Singapura and Katong Blues, and guitar orchestra pieces such as Gela-Nexus and the erhu, sitar and guitar orchestra piece Huan Ying-Vanakam.

In 1981, Abisheganaden founded Singapore’s first guitar orchestra, the National University of Singapore Guitar Ensemble (GENUS), and in 1986 made it Southeast Asia’s first Niibori guitar orchestra, performing a wide-ranging repertoire that includes Alex’s compositions such as Gela-Nexus and Huan Ying-Vanakam (which GENUS performed in Germany in 2007). He also initiated an annual concert that remains popular today.

For his contributions to music in Singapore, Abisheganaden received the Cultural Medallion in 1988. In 1998, he received the COMPASS Meritorious Award from the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore.

Alex was the patron and artistic director of the Toa Payoh Guitar Club, which consists of guitarists spanning generations and diverse backgrounds. He performed and taught aspiring young guitarists both solo and ensemble guitar playing with commitment and passion.

Alex passed away peacefully in Singapore on 17 March 2023 at the age of 97.