Born and raised in the USA, Arun Ramamurthy wanted to present the Carnatic music he played to the culture he grew up in. That led to Carnatic Sundays at the Cornelia Street Café, a highly regarded jazz club in the lower Westside in New York city which ran programs 7…
Hemavathy, the recently released biography of Parassala Ponnammal, sheds light on the lifelong Kerala- based Carnatic musician academic who became known outside her native state for the first time only at age 82. She went on to get several prestigious awards subsequently, the capstone being the Padma Sri in 2017…
Agam set the field ablaze when they arrived over ten years ago as the pioneer of what Rolling Stones magazine called Carnatic Progressive Rock. Leading classical musicians like Aruna Sairam, Ranjani and Gayatri and Kaushiki Chakraborty have since collaborated with them. Agam has a cult following ranging from children to…
Classical music the world over has always been a niche field. Indian Classical Music, thanks to the geographical stamp, has an even smaller following. Many construe it as rather exclusive and inaccessible to the layperson with its staid and prim and proper image and a perception of rigid rules for…
Despite the world of the arts being severely impacted, Jayalakshmi Balakrishnan and Arkay Ramakrishnan each organised hundreds of concerts throughout the pandemic, all free to rasikas, for their respective non-profit organisations Naada Inbam and Madhuradhwani. A mechanical engineer with a degree in Indian music as well, Jayalakshmi Balakrishnan took…
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…
The strummed tambura wafts in through arresting scenery, the sounds of birds, critters and water, as musicians perform in carefully curated natural, outdoor settings. Filmed across India, First Edition Arts’(FEA) Blue Planet series, launching today evening, hopes to highlight the connections between the living ecology of the planet and the…
R. Lakshminarayanan, R. Vaidhyanathan, Latha Venkataraman and Kalyani Viswanathan have been on the most prominent of Carnatic concert stages for 15-50 years. Yet, most readers would not know who they are. They are tambura players – unknown, unnoticed and mostly uncredited. Vocalist Nisha Rajagopalan cannot imagine performing on stage without…
Veteran violinist Sikkil R. Bhaskaran passed away on 20 July 2021. Dedicated exclusively to accompaniment, the artists he shared the stage with straddle generations and read like a who’s who of Carnatic music—from Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer, K.B. Sundarambal and M.M. Dandapani Desigar to Sikkil Mala Chandrasekhar, N. Vijay Siva and…