Mridangist, vocalist, violinist, trained in Hindustani, PhD in music and Guru to many, 92-year-young Dr. T.V. Gopalakrishnan (TVG) is an incredibly versatile musician and talking to him was a walk through over 75 years of music. At age 9, TVG played second mridangam for Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar (Chembai) at a…
Gayathri Vasantha Shobha was born on November 9th 1959 in Madras. Her earliest musical memories are of her mother teaching veena at home. “I had no dolls. The veena was my doll,” she says. As soon as her mother’s students left, Gayathri would ensconce herself by the instrument, holding it…
My Guru, Sri. O.S. Thiagarajan (OST), passed away on December 31st. When I started lessons with him, I was a young child, completely unaware of (and uninterested in) his musical skills or pedigree. The first piece he taught was Muthuswamy Dikshitar’s MahA GaNapate in NaTanArAyaNi – he was kind and…
The many awards Kollengode Viswanatha Narayanaswamy (KVN) received, including the Padma Sri, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Puraskar and the Sangita Kalanidhi, served only to publicly highlight the talents of an artiste who was already acknowledged in his own lifetime as a consummate Carnatic musician. KVN’s all-round expertise was packaged in…
He is perhaps the most polarising mridangists of current times and K Arun Prakash is well aware of it. “What I am doing is unprecedented and anything unprecedented takes time to get accepted,” he says, in the unflustered manner typical of him. One realises very soon that he is a…
His calm and composed countenance belies the vidvat within. RK Shriramkumar’s is profound all-round musicality, signifying an amalgam of intellect, knowledge, creativity and bhAvam (the conveying of emotion) combined with dedication and deference to the artform itself. He is a solo violinist, accompanying violinist, respected vAgayEkkAra (a lyricist who also…
Even before her first formal lesson, a varnam, the young girl had already picked up the corpus of songs that the entire household knew by heart, like Santhi Nilava Vendum, Eppadi Paadinaro, Maamava Pattabhirama. Nithyasree Mahadevan was born on 25th August 1973 to I. Sivakumar and Lalitha Sivakumar. A more…
To dare to be different in presenting an art form permeated by tradition, lineage and seemingly inviolable rules requires courage, and especially so when you are the headliner of your own eponymous crossover band. Roopa Mahadevan of Roopa in Flux and Aditya Prakash of Aditya Prakash Ensemble have done so,…
Sruti Magazine January 2022 Cover Story (Note: The following is only an excerpt. To read the full article, subscribe to Sruti.) How Sikkil C. Gurucharan became a vocalist is itself curious — even to him! Born in Chennai on 21 June 1982 to V. Chandrasekaran and Mythili (daughter of Sikkil Kunjumani, the elder of the Sikkil Sisters flautist-duo), he recollects his grandmothers testing the blowing ability of prospective flute students by asking…
Known for nuanced and sensitive accompaniment, veteran mridangist and academic Sangita Kalanidhi Trichy Sankaran has played for Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer, Musiri Subramania Iyer, Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, Ramnad Krishnan, Madurai Mani Iyer, G.N. Balasubramaniam, M.D. Ramanathan, K.V. Narayanaswamy, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Flute Mali and many others across generations. “I jokingly say…