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…
Friends in Concert, a unique production featuring 13 well known Carnatic musicians, first aired digitally in 2020. A new, live production premieres on January 19th at The Music Academy. TM Krishna, the brain behind it, explains. “During the pandemic, musicians were putting out clips mostly by themselves. Music making, however,…
On YouTube is a K.V. Narayanaswamy (KVN) concert, listing co-artistes M. Chandrasekaran, Umayalpuram Sivaraman and G. Harishankar. Presenting ‘vAtApi gaNapatim’ after a shloka, KVN sings a classic sangati at the 2 minute 52 second mark when, suddenly, mid-line, the kanjira comes in – for all of 9-10 aksharam-s – clear,…
With globalisation, Indian artforms are more widespread. Larger auditoriums, extensive travel and many more concerts have inspired rethinks on the construction of many traditional instruments. Restrictive luggage constraints made portability key. Long tours without access to repair technicians necessitated durability. Such practical needs coupled with a desire for a unique…
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…
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…
V. Sai Subramaniam who (along with vocalist Palghat Dr. R. Ramprasad) is the recipient of this year’s Kalki Krishnamurthy Award, is the first morsing exponent to receive the prestigious honour in the over 25 years since its inception. According to ghatam exponent G. Chandrasekara Sharma, Sai is, in fact, the…
Senior mridangist J. Vaidhyanathan believes his commitment to accompaniment begins right from arriving well on time for the concert. “A concert is like a yagna, a lot of effort—we should not cause any consternation to either the organiser or the artists—rather, we should ensure that we do whatever we can…
Women in percussion are so few that their gender alone makes them the cynosure of attention. Bengaluru-based Bhagyalakshmi M. Krishna, however, has gone beyond that, earning respect for her skills on the morsing, the identical adjectives used by her fellow artistes serving as testament. She has shared the stage with…
Praveen Sparsh’s recent passion project, Unreserved, puts the mridangam in settings outside its traditional confines, and marries it with sounds he painstakingly recorded over the years on treks, at traffic signals, airports, rail and bus stations. To hear music, or the potential for music, in noise – or what the…