Sadas winners at MMA

[mahavishnu]

I was not at the event, but this is what I heard from a reliable source.

Here is a list of some of the awards given on 1/1/2012 (not a complete list, categories might be inaccurate/incomplete). I thought it might be interesting to post this in this forum, since most of these concerts were reviewed here.

senior vocalist (male): Neyveli Santhanagopalan [not sure if this is the Yogam Nagaswamy prize also]
senior vocalist (female): Savita Narasimhan
senior violinist: Akkarai Subhalakshmi
senior mridangist: VV Ramanamurthy
Best senior concert: Ranjani Gayatri, HN Bhaskar, KV Prasad, BS Purushothaman
Vainika award: Padmavathy Ananthagopalan, Jayanthi Kumaresh
category not sure: N Ravikiran
Best pallavi: Sanjay Subrahmanyan

sub-senior vocal (male): Prasanna Venkataraman
outstanding junior vocalist: Ramakrishnan Murthy
Best junior vocal concert (male): Sandeep Narayan, Akkarai Sornalatha, NC Bharadwaj.

Congratulations to all the awardees!

[rananthga]

Congratulations to Ramakrishna Murthy for the outstanding junior vocalist award. Well deserved. I'd have thought he should have gotten the best concert award also.

[mahesh3]

I would single out Prasanna Venkatraman, he sang majestically. Also, wanted to point out the concert of a certain Maruti Prasad (student of Sathyavathi TS) - at the beginning of the concert, 10 people in the auditorium, 200 people by the end. Many walked in on hearing his thodi from the cafeteria, and he was given a standing ovation by people moved.

[prashant]

Smt. Sumithra Vasudev was adjudged the best sub-senior lady vocalist for her concert which was anchored by a majestic RTP in kAmbhOji. She also won the award for the best lecture-demonstration [in her debut in this category!].

[pks]

Rajna Swaminathan (Mrudangam) accompanied Maruti Prasad (vocal) on Dec 30.
Rajna was awarded their mrudangam prize in the 12 noon category.
Heard that the concert was received extremely well by the audience with a standing ovation !!

[mahesh3]

yes PKS, Rajna played wonderfully as well. I have heard her perform before. It was Maruti Prasad's singing that was something else...evoked a sense of satisfaction that good still exists .

[Nick H]

I wonder who does all this categorizing as senior, sub-senior, etc, etc --- the Academy themselves, I suppose? Is at according to which slot in the day is allocated? When will Sumithra graduate from "sub" to Senior? How much does the date on the birth certificate count, and where does this leave those who started young, or very, very young?

Sumithra's concert was bashed by The Hindu: I'm delighted to hear that it was properly recognised by the Academy itself. Congratulations to her for both her awards.

"category not sure" for N Ravikiran? He needs no category: He is a category all by himself!

I'm pleased also for recognition of Jayanthi Kumaresh. I don't think she gets nearly enough recognition as an amazingly gifted classical artist. (Plug: 5 Jan, Raga Sudha Hall).

[bilahari]

Yay for Sri NSG for a well deserved award for his awesome concert!

Also happy for Ramakrishnan Murthy, though I didn't attend his MA concert.

And will have to check out Savita Narasimhan next time.

Congratulations to all the winners.

[rajeshnat]

For sub senior male the contenders were 1. Prasanna Venkatraman 2. Vechoor Shankar 3. Trichy Ramesh 4. MK Sankaran Namboodri 5. Dr Balasubramanian 6. G Srikanth
I thought Prasanna would make it , as it was not that much competition there for sure, too many wild card entries and quite few of them did not sing. congrats prasanna

But in sub senior female , it was really tough contest with 5 really top notch performers. 1. Aruna Ranganathan 2. Sumitra Vasudev 3. K Gayathri 4. Amritha Murali 5. Serugudi Sisters(rama and geeta) 6. Sangeetha Swaminathan 7. Nisha Rajagopal

Sumitra winning is very very laudable , congrats to her. Congrats to NSG, Sanjay, R&G, akkarai and Ramanamurthy (I have not heard him much , once I recollect seeing in tv)

Congrats also to the young brigade of Ramakrishnan murthy and Sandeep Narayanan (LA lakers team).

[shankarabharanam]

Congrats to all the winners!!!.. We are witnessing a real young brigade to take the baton from their gurus. Whether it is the sub senior or the junior category. In the sub senior category I attended all the concert s of the female that rajesh has pointed out. I was expecting either K Gayathri or Sangeetha to win it. Nevertheless Sumithra is brilliant too...

Prasanna has already set high standards . If we are talking about Hindu criticising Sumithra's concert what about R&G's thread in our forum.

[rshankar]

Congratulations to all the winners! All of them very well deserved, I am sure. Makes their hard work worthwhile. Nice to see the aunt-neice/guru-sishya pair of Smt. Padmavathi (yet another of Lalgudi Sri GJ's amazing siblings) and Smt. Jayanthi get recognized in the vaiNika category!

[Enna_Solven]

As Nick asks, when do people graduate from one category to a higher one? Say, why give awards to CNR/NSG? (one of my favorite singers, don't take offense) For him, Sanjay, CNR and other established singers/gurus, is it not simply SK after some years?

I am very happy for Sumithra Vasudev. Her and Amritha Murali's Charsur concerts were very good.

[Enna_Solven]

"category not sure" for N Ravikiran? He needs no category: He is a category all by himself!

Nick, try to listen to this English/Tamil LecDem of Ravikiran if you are interested. It was on "SImilarity in compositions of Thyagaraja/Oothukkadu Venkata kavi."
http://sangeethapriya.gotdns.org:8080/s ... kata_Kavi/

I am happy about Jayanthi Kumaresh being recognized. I listen to her radio concerts and CD's. Very classical, no showmanship.

[CommonMan]

@enna_solven: absolutely, "No Showmanship" of Jayanthi Kumaresh

[sankark]

Best Pallavi for Sanjay. He sang a brief kApi pallavi (chinnanchiru kiliyE kaNNammA). If that was the best pallavi of the season@MA, what quality were the others?

[tkb]

Congratulations to the winners and our best wishes.

[prasadsankar]

Hyderabad brothers also won the best senior vocalist award.

[fduddy]

Best Pallavi for Sanjay. He sang a brief kApi pallavi (chinnanchiru kiliyE kaNNammA). If that was the best pallavi of the season@MA, what quality were the others?

That pallavi I dount was brief. The raga + tanam + pallavi was around 40 mins in total. And it was very well done. Raga alapana was very nice in particular.

[rajeshnat]

Hyderabad brothers also won the best senior vocalist award.

senior vocalist (male): Neyveli Santhanagopalan [not sure if this is the Yogam Nagaswamy prize also]
senior vocalist (female): Savita Narasimhan
senior violinist: Akkarai Subhalakshmi
senior mridangist: VV Ramanamurthy

Can some one confirm who got yogam nagaswamy, the awardee best vocalist usually gets it , may be it is hyderabad brothers.

Also this is the first time I am also seeing the vocalist who perform in morning are also awarded for senior musician award (Shri NSG performed in the morning)

Incidentally I also see that Akkarai subhalakshmi got this violinist award while playing for Abhishek and V V Ramanamurthy got this while playing for ganesh-kumaresh , as those are the two concerts in the schedule.

May some one confirm yogam nagaswamy and also who got the best sub senior mrudangist and violinist too?

[sankark]

fduddy - I had to step out for a call in between and so my impression was of a short one My mistake.

[mahavishnu]

fduddy, thanks. Yes, including the tani the RTP was just about 1 hour. I can confirm that from a recording of the concert.

Sankark, this doesn't speak very highly for your credibility when you make comments about the declining standards of pallavi quality when you were not even there! Just saying.

[sankark]

mahavishnu - my comment was not about Sanjay's RTP per se. I am not a expert but I would certainly not recall that RTP in couple of years for sure - the way I will recall his pushpalathika at NCA or his ganamoorthe in the MA this year. When some RTP is awarded as best pallavi and that too at MA for the season, I then feel if that is the best what about the rest. Thats what I was wondering about.

[update]One more thing - when I saw that award I could not even place the RTP for that day that he sang. I remembered ganamurthi & neelambari but not the RTP. So went back to the review of the concert in this forum and then I was able to place the same.[/update]

[maduraimini]

Congratulations to all winners- seniors,juniors, sub juniors -anybody who promote CM and was acknowledged by somebody! Best of luck to all!

[padavarnam]

The RTP of Sanjay was average by his own standards. And the tanam patterns were hardly the way a tanam should be sung. The pallavi by itself wasn't that well constructed or intricate to deserve an RTP award, but the concert as such has quite a few good elements and cannot be termed as a bad concert by any measure.
Savitha Narasimhan's concert was decent. Nothing sparkling or as great as described here by some. She had a well planned structure and executed it as she practiced. When one has just one concert to focus, atleast this standard should be there. May be since it came right after the Super crowd puller's show, it sounded so much better even to the judges. She has to sing with an open voice. Most part of the concert, she seems to mumble. May be her voice has some issues best known to her. Sumithra Vasudev is definitely talented but her concert at Academy was below her par and even by overall standards not that spectacular. Kudos to Ramakrishnan murthy. Hope he continues to work hard.

[gardabha_gana]

So what, she seems to have the right connections at the top level, which is more important than how well she sang. K

padavarnam, you seem to be on a rant - and the this last quote of yours is slander. Please don't make such insinuations on practitioners of this divine art.

[padavarnam]

Point taken and edited. Actually I am a great fan of her ideals to music and hence expect much more, but for what she sang that day she didn't deserve the award is my feeling.

[mahesh3]

K. Balamurali Krishna's RTP in his academy concert was clearly standout, simply superb...not to knock Sanjay - am a big fan of his music, but... his RTP in the academy was such a ridiculous one, one should definitely be concerned about the lack of musical acumen displayed by the judges. I am not of the school that a Pallavi needs to be intricate to win, but anyway - Sanjay deserves the accolades he gets for his sincere approach to music, just not the Pallavi one....I don't want to comment on the other winners...I am v. happy about Prasanna Venkatraman being recognized this season. Was hoping Bharadwaj would win in the mridangam category, instead he got clubbed with best vocal music concert . Got to love how these things get done.

[fuddyduddy]

K. Balamurali Krishna's RTP in his academy concert was clearly standout, simply superb...

really glad to see some mention of that remarkable pallavi by KBMK.. with the artiste's permission i had recorded it and its still hard to believe as I keep re-hearing it, how some of the anulomam and pratilomam after the neravals, went so smoothly without any effort for such a complicated thaalam and also choosing a main raaga like Kalyani for it. my comment to the artiste was to become more down-to-earth and do some normal pallavis as there doesnt seem to be much appreciation for such super-human efforts!
the other Kalyani that really stood out this season for me was TN Seshagopalans, again in the Academy and hope I can get hold of that recording somewhere!

[semmu86]

do some normal pallavis as there doesnt seem to be much appreciation for such super-human efforts!

People should be able to understand what is happening during pallavi and its grammar for them to appreciate it. Semmangudi mama was asked once as to why dosent he sing complex pallavis, to which he is reported to have said "We should not trouble the people by singing what all we know, rather we should sing stuff that makes them feel happy and comfortable". Thus we (or atleast myself) hardly have recordings of SSI,MMI, or an iyengArvAL singing complex pallavis with all the intricacies.

Not that am trying to justify SSI's views here, but it was pretty much evident that even during those days, people didnt appreciate such complex stuff. Not that am against singing such complex pallavis, Its rather unfortunate that a majority of the section of the public dont seem to elevate themselves and learn such intricacies and appreciate the efforts of the artists. Unfortunately Only the laya aficionados go into all those details and understand them. Just like KNV said that there should be a separate series for harikathA, there should be one for Pallavis too, to keep this great tradition of ours going..

[fuddyduddy]

but isnt it sad that we have an art that has so many intricacies and depths to it, but we want to settle to something much lesser just for the audience? i believe that the same complicated pallavi can actually be heard by 2 different kinds of ears : one just for the sake of the melody and beauty in the words and the patterns embedded without actually having to know any technicalities; and the other kind to try and understand what really was going on in the artistes mind.. for several years listening to music, I used to just be there for the raagam and a basic high-level knowledge of it; its just lately that I have tried to understand something deeper and i see more beauty and cant stop from learning more about it..
the pallavi series is indeed a great idea. i believe sashikiran did start an annual pallavi darbar - we just need more of those

[semmu86]

but isnt it sad that we have an art that has so many intricacies and depths to it, but we want to settle to something much lesser just for the audience?

Exactly..Am sure, "settling for lesser" is not what most of the artists will prefer. Am saying this for sure after having listened to many brilliant pallavis (With all the intricacies) this season @ MA morning concerts and the one by Sanjay S for Thamizh isai sangam. "Settling for lesser" is the choice that the audience has inflicted amongst themselves by not giving recognition where its due.

i believe sashikiran did start an annual pallavi darbar - we just need more of those

Again Spot on...Dont see that happening too often (P.S.:- Am not all downplaying the efforts taken upon by Sashikiran here). Once in a blue-moon is just not going to help. There was a brilliant lec-dem by Prof. TRS, where he de-mystifies and talks about the greatness of Pallavis and sings them as 1234 1234 for the beginners in this subject. There should be more such exercises for this great art of Pallavis to get recognised.

[mahesh3]

[quote="semmu86"]Semmangudi mama was asked once as to why dosent he sing complex pallavis, to which he is reported to have said "We should not trouble the people by singing what all we know, rather we should sing stuff that makes them feel happy and comfortable".

Thats Semmangudi's reason for why he does not sing complex pallavis - it need not be THE reason why he did not sing complex pallavis . I would give weight to the opinion of a GNB, TNS, Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna, TRS or a Kalyanaraman in this regard.

[pks]

Here is Rajna's thaniavarthanam from this season:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tM4k7jMits

[rajeshnat]

Congratulations Rajna on the award

[rajeshnat]

The Best Sub Senior Mrudangist award was given to A V Manikandan (disciple of kaaraikudi Mani), yesterday I heard this from Prasanna Venkatraman. Congrats Manikandan.

[ganeshkant]

The Best Sub Senior Mrudangist award was given to A V Manikandan (disciple of kaaraikudi Mani), yesterday I heard this from Prasanna Venkatraman. Congrats Manikandan.

His playing was deft and the tani was superb.So,he truly deserves that.

[pks]

Here is the link to download the Maruti Prasad Academy concert of Dec 30:

http://www.4shared.com/mp3/6_1tVJMR/SR_ ... al_S_.html