Maharajapuram Srinivasan

Sri Maharajapuram S. Srinivasan is the grandson of Sangeetha Kalanidhi Sri Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer and son of Sangeetha Kalanidhi Sri Maharajapuram Santhanam, veterans in the field of Carnatic Music. Sri Maharajapuram Srinivasan, an acclaimed musician in his own right has been performing music concerts individually since 1986. He has had the good fortune of being the primary disciple of both his grandfather as well as his father and has thus imbibed their rich musical heritage. He has performed all over India in all the leading Sabhas including The Music Academy, The Indian Fine Arts Society, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, Tamil Isai Sangam in Chennai and other Sabhas in New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. He is also regularly performing for the Doordarshan and the AIR and is an ‘A’ grade artiste. He has accompanied his father, the illustrious Sri Maharajapuram Santhanam in all his concerts both in India as well as abroad.

Endowed with a fine feeling for melody, he is striving to admirably combine the Lakshana and Lakshiya styles handed down to him by his ancestors and desires to prove his mettle as a chip of the old block.

Sri Maharajapuram Srinivasan, an acclaimed musician in his own right has been performing music concerts individually since 1986. He has had the good fortune of being the primary disciple of both his grandfather as well as his father and has thus imbibed their rich musical heritage. He has performed all over India in all the leading Sabhas including The Music Academy, The Indian Fine Arts Society, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, Tamil Isai Sangam in Chennai and other Sabhas in New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. He is also regularly performing for the Doordarshan and the AIR and is an ‘A’ grade artiste. He has accompanied his father, the illustrious Sri Maharajapuram Santhanam in all his concerts both in India as well as abroad.

He has released a few cassettes brought out by A.V.M, Meltrack (under the young Maestros Scheme) and the most recent being “Maharajapuram Hits“ by Vani Cassettes, which has received rave reviews from the press and television media.  Endowed with a fine feeling for melody, he is striving to admirably combine the Lakshana and Lakshiya styles handed down to him by his ancestors and desires to prove his mettle as a chip of the old block.

Feathers in his cap

Then Isai Thenral

Asthana Vidwan of the Vysaraya Mutt, Tumkur (Bangalore)

Asthana Vidwan of Sri Kanchi Kamokoti Peetam awarded by Pujya Sri Jayendra Saraswathi on the occasion of his 70th birthday Jayanthi celebrations on 3/8/2004.

Simha Dhwani Samrat awarded by Pujya Sri Swamiji of the Vysaraya Mutt

Best Vocalist in the Sub Senior Category from the Music Academy in 2000

Has received rave reviews from Senior Music Critics appreciating his performance in various concerts. (Enclosed are excerpts of some reviews)

Participation in Satellite Channel Interview

Appeared in “Prabalangaludan Oru Naal”, a weekly programme in Sun TV in 1996, where he spoke at length about his achievements, the contributions made by his family to the field of Carnatic Music.

Participated in “Vanakkam Tamizhagam”, another daily programme of repute in Sun TV, where he spoke about the family legacy that has been passed on over generations, the typical Maharajapuram bhani or style that has enthralled audience world over and about voice culture and voice therapy.

Has featured in “Nayandi Durbar”, a Humour Show in Vijay TV, with his son M.S. Ganesh Viswanathan, where both father and son enchanted the viewers with their jokes and mellifluous voices. His son, a child prodigy who won the appreciation of many by singing the song “Naalai Varum Endru Nambalaama” in this show has been performing individual concerts and is also accompanying his father in his concerts all over India.

Other Noteworthy Contributions

Sri Srinivasan is the Trustee of the Maharajapuram Viswantha Iyer Trust and the Maharajapuram Santhanam Foundation, two institutions which aim at promoting classical music by honouring musicians – senior, junior as well as young, upcoming artistes. These institutions aspire to serve as a platform to bring to limelight the talents of many budding artistes. They also recognize the contributions made by the Sabha Secretaries, Music Critics and other Kala Sevakhs. Srinivasan has been taking painstaking efforts to hold these functions thrice a year in memory of his grand father and his father.

Seema Kasthuri

Seema Kasthuri is an accomplished singer with a charming voice. She has undergone Carnatic Music training for over 10 years under Vidwan K.R Venkatesh. She has completed her Senior level board exams in Karnataka. Seema has accompanied Guru. Venkatesh in several concerts held in many places of state of Karnataka. Seema has taken active participation in most of the music productions from Sharada Vidyalaya under guru Venkatesh that was produced for All India Radio. She has also given concerts in Devotional Music and light music. Later, she is pursued her education studentship with Chintalapalli Krishnamurthy.

Seema is an active dancer by herself; she performs with the productions of Soorya Dance Company. Seema has provided vocal support to classical dance drama productions. She composed music for "OM Ganesha" - a classical dance drama on lord Ganeshji's story.  Seema's album "Sri Lola" - a collection of Daasa literature songs is released in India in November 2002.

Seema took greater training with many, yet the important ones are Carnatic from Guru Nagamani Srinath and Hindustani Music from Ustad Imrat Khan.

Seema performs frequently in many Sabhas and temples. She has performance in “Chintalapalli Smaraka Sabha” in Bangalore, Kansas Music Association, Chicago AKKA Sammelana, Hindu Temple of St. Louis, Indian Association of Greater Springfield; ANANYA – Bangalore, Mallur Sri Venkateshwara temple and many other places.  Seema accompanied many of arangetram functions of Soorya Performing Arts in 2006, 2007. Her recent role as RADHA in - "CALL OF THE FLUTE" - the first ever dance musical of USA got the attention of classical music and classical dance lovers evenly.  Seema was selected to perform in “Saagaradache Sapta Swara” , a music show, which was telecasted on Indian television channel – Chandana. Recently, graduated her Masters Degree in Information Management from Washington University, St. Louis.

Sankaran Mahadevan

Sankaran Mahadevan is an Indian classical vocalist in the Carnatic (South Indian) music tradition. He received his training from Professor T. R. Subramanyam, Mrs. Jayalakshmi Santhanam, and others. Dr. Mahadevan has given concerts and lecture-demonstrations on Carnatic music in the United States and India. He teaches vocal music at Kala Nivedanam. His senior students have performed at various venues, most notably with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra at the famed Ryman Auditorium in a special concert of spiritual music.

Dr. Mahadevan has composed numerous songs for concert settings, for the Bharatanatyam repertoire, and for devotional singing. He has also pioneered an attractive multi-media presentation style for Carnatic music performances, to help the audience absorb the meanings of the lyrics and other information along with the music. He is the vocalist for the arangetrams of Kala Nivedanam dance students. In addition, Dr. Mahadevan has produced two cassettes of devotional music for the Sri Ganesha Temple in Nashville.

Dr. Mahadevan is a professor of Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University.

A Prem Kumar

A Premkumar, is a very well saught after Mrudangam player, who is amaster of Mridangam, Kanjira and Konnakol in India. He has accompanied every major artists of Carnatic music such Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna, SemmanGudi, T R Subramanyam, Jesu Das, Sudha Rani raghupathy, Bombay Jaishree and many others in his illustrious career spanning more than five decades. At present he works as Staff artist (Mridangist) at All India Radio, New Delhi. He teaches and trains hundreds of students in Delhi Tamil Sangam, New Delhi. For his servicem he was awarded KALAIMAMANI from

Tamilnadu Govt., Thanjavur VAIDHYANATHA IYER AWARD, RAMAN MUNJAL MEMORIAL VOCATIONAL AWARD from Rotary Club of Delhi. He has released a CD on percussion instruments.

Ganesh Kumar

Ganesh Kumar Neelakantan Nanjunda Rao, hails from Mysore. He currently settled in Bangalore, India he plays violin in Carnatic style. Ganesh learnt from age of 10 under the tutelage of senior violin maestro Mr. H.K. Narasimha Murthy of Mysore, who was Staff artist in All India Radio in Mysore. He took 15 years of dedicated training in Carnatic classical music with him in Mysore. Later he received advance training from another violin Guru from Chennai - Mr. M.A. Sundaresan. Ganesh is teaching for the past 20 years and trained many students in India, Singapore and U.S.A.  He worked as a Violin tutor in prestigious Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society, Singapore for 7 years and trained hundreds of students.  Six of his students got I and II prize for continuous three years at national level conducted by National Arts Council, Singapore. He was invited to teach in Pittsburgh Temple in 2011.

Mr. Ganesh has travelled to South East Asia and USA several times to accompany many senior artists and to give many solo performances. Till today, he has accompanied many senior artists such as T.V. Sankaranarayanan, Prof. Nagamani Srinath, Dr. Suma Sudhindra, Neela Ramgopal and other main stream musicians. He is a regular performers on Indian Government Television Channel - Dooradarsan.

Ganesh has accompanied hundreds of Music recordings for dance performances. He was invited to accompany many Bharathanatyam performances from peer organization such as Shanthala Arts Academy, Kirans, Padmini Ramachandran and others. His violin support for recent album of “Sri Chakra” for Soorya Performing Arts is simply amazing. He has received best accompanist award from Malleswaram and Gayana Samaj, Sabhas Bangalore. Ganesh has worked with Soorya performing arts India based works. He has collaborated in projects in the past, with Soorya’ s musicians such as – Ramesh Ramalingappa and Jayaprakash Kannur in Bharathanatyam and Carnatic music showcases. He holds a bachelor in Science from Mysore University.

Ramesh Ramalingappa - (Mrudangist)

Ramesh Ramalingappa, with more than 3500 performances, is a master Mrudangist. He is the student of legendary percussion master Vasudeva Rao. Ramesh is versatile percussionist who can play more than 5 instruments. He holds a rank in Vidwath Exams and has awarded prestigeous Ananya Yuva Puraskar. He has accompanied major classical musicians and dancers since 1980's.

Ramesh was a major figure in Indian Dance music festivals such as Hampi Dance Festival, Mysore International Music Festival, The Royal Kadamba festival of dance and music and others. He is an “A” graded artist from All India Radio - the National Radio station of India. He has accompanied famous musicians such as TV Gopalakrsihna, MS Gopalakrishna, NaivKalaskeli Santhana Gopalana, TV Shankaranarayana, RK Surya Narayana and others.

With his team Nandi Talavadya academy, he has toured European countries such as Holland, Germany and other countries. In 2011, he performed in Mexico’s historic cultural events, in which he participated close to 25 shows in a span of 20 days.

Ramesh is a highly sought after mrudangam player in classical music dance and recording industry of Bangalore, India.

Jayaprakash Kakkopurath

Jayaprakash Kakkopurath, a veteran flautist hails from Kannur District in the beautiful state of Kerala. He started his career as a Professional traditional Bamboo flute player in 1970s. He is the senior disciple of Guru C R Panikkar Achar(1962 – 1975), in which he was trained in flute in a traditional Guru-Shishya tradition. Jayaprakash as an experienced flutist, has contributed immensely to the field of Indian classical dances. He was invited to perform in many prestigious festivals such as Guruvayur Chembai Sangeethothsavam; Lasya Festival, Calicut; World Performing Arts Festival, New Delhi; Bhopal Arts Academy, Madhya Pradesh; Kalakendra, Hyderabad.  He performed in key venues such as Narada Gana Sabha, Brahma Gana Sabha in Chennai and in Bangalore, which are called cultural capitals of India. He performed in World Kannada Conference in Chicago, 2008; World Kannada Conference in New Jersey, 2010; St. Louis Indian Dance Festival in 2008. Jayaprakash was awarded ‘Krishna Geetika” award from Chilamboli Academy of arts in Tiruvangada, Kerala. Jayaprakash produced successful musical CDs -  Hare Ram, Shivoham, Muthappa Charitham. Since 2008, he is accompanying the dance projects conducted by Soorya Performing Arts based in St. Louis, MO. He provided music to their productions such as “Call of Flute”, “Zero”, “Bhakti Patha”, “Shringara Naradiyam” and many arangetrams. He accompanied Guru Prasanna Kasthuri in his dance performances in India and USA.  Jayaprakash is a graded All India Radio Artist.

Shyam Murali

Shyam Murali, an avid music lover, started his piano & started Carnatic vocal training at an early age. He was introduced to playing the Saxophone in 6th grade and was ably coached by Late Mrs. Indu Krishnamurthy to play Carnatic music. Under her guidance, he had his formal arangetram in October 2005. He continues his training under Dr. Kadri Gopalnath, Flute Sashank and Mr. Prasant Radhakrishnan. Shyam has played in the Chennai music festival for two seasons with TV relays on Kalaingar TV and Raj TV.  He plays regularly at all the important temple festivals like vigraha prathistapana and kalayana utsavam, at several cities in the US, including Houston, San Francisco, Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, etc.,

Shyam started a new world music troupe, called Jugal Vandy, at his university and is actively performing with the group at events on and off campus. He has two CDs to his credit – Mayuram & Yaatra, supported by senior artists. Funds raised are donated to charities like Ekal Vidyalaya and Akshya Patra. Shyam is currently coaching a few aspiring students pursuing Carnatic music on the saxophone. He is also a self-taught ghatam and kanjira player and has accompanied artists such as Rajesh Vaidya, Salem Sriram, Dr. Sankaran Mahadevan, and Trichur Ramachandran. Shyam graduated from Plano East as an International Baccalaureate and is a final year under-grad student at Vanderbilt University.