Shrish is a classical double bassist as well as a composer. He is at home performing in orchestral and chamber music, and enjoys working with fellow composers to premiere their new work. His orchestral bass is fitted with a low C extension, allowing him to reach a full octave below the cello. Shrish has performed standard repertoire, including Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 5, No. 7, & No. 9; Mahler’s Symphony No. 1—including the double bass solo in 2020; Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. He has also performed newer works, including Nina Siniakova’s Arrows for 3 Cellos and Double Bass. In his capacity as a composer, Shrish has also composed works for himself, many of which he performed during his undergraduate years, including the 3 pieces titled Songs Without Words. In May 2023, he co-coordinated and was the double bassist in Temple Composers’ Orchestra, which recorded five pieces by student composers, including Shrish’s own Symphonia Parva.

Shrish is interested in Historically-Informed double bass performance, with an interest in baroque- and classical-era repertoire. This includes performing on baroque bass as part of a basso continuo section, and learning more about historical performance practice. As part of this evolving interest, he began playing viola da gamba in 2021, and G violone in 2022. Shrish is capable of playing on any size viol, but particularly favors the tenor, bass, and G violone sizes. He has performed on tenor and bass viols, G violone, and Viennese violone with Temple University Early Music Ensemble and bass viola da gamba with La Fiocco.

As another outgrowth of his interest in historical performance, one of Shrish’s double basses is set up as a Viennese violone, an instrument and tuning system that became popular around Vienna in the second half of the eighteenth century, and was known to both Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This instrument had a flourishing repertoire of concerti (by Vaňhal, Hoffmeister, Dittersdorf, and Sperger, among others) and solos composed for it, including the bass solos in Haydn’s Symphonies 6, 7, and 8; and Mozart’s “Per Questa Bella Mano.” So far, Shrish has performed with this instrument in this tuning for works of Mozart.

Shrish is also a tabla player, which he learned from Pandit Samir Chatterjee and Gokul Panda as a child. He is a capable accompanist, and works closely with the vocalist or instrumentalist to capture the atmosphere of the performance and the mood of the rāga.

Although he is primarily an instrumentalist, Shrish has also performed as a vocalist with Epiphany Singers, a Philadelphia-based choir, as a member of its bass section.

His double basses are a Strobel MB-500 double bass with 4 strings (orchestral tuning with low C extension; and Seth Kimmel #72, a Pacific Violone model with 5 strings (currently in Viennese tuning; see photo). Shrish has studied double bass with Art Stephano, Chris Clark, and Heather Miller Lardin.