KNV1955 wrote:I have been attending concerts all through the year for the last 2 years mainly at Raga Sudha hall, Chennai. I see the same audience (around 50 rarely going upto 100) for popular & unpopular musicians during off season. Very few concerts (less than 5%) are held in large auditoriums like Music Academy off season. Even those concerts are by the popular artists for some fund rising or jugalbhandhi etc. Lesser known artists are featured only in 2 to 3 venues (Raga Sudha/Sastri Hall/Dakshinamurthy Hall/Vidwat Samajam). Infact I can form a club of these 50 people (includes Vidvan TRS/Mridangist Kalidas/Vocalist Jayalakshmi Santhanam). I can also say this 50 are silent opinion makers. When they start endorsing the artists I find they ultimately make it big. I can say Amrita Murali/Sumitra Vasudev/Ramakrishna Murthy/Bhavana Iyer/Bharat Sundar/Sruti sagar/K.Gayatri/NJ Nandini/Aswath Narayan & no of accompanists drew attention of Music Academy & other major organizers during season, only after they performed a no of concerts at these venues. None of the popular of artist who draw huge crowds during season perform at these venues during off season.
Actually, one should add the mini-halls at Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan, Narada Gana Sabha and even the Music Acadeny and Krishna Gana Sabha as venues where upcoming artists are featured. The reason of course is the intimacy provided by these smaller halls, the lower auditorium rental charges, the disappointment faced by the performer when one sees 4 persons in the audience in a large hall such as Gnananda Hall, etc.
In fact, most off-season concerts of upcoming artists are held in mini-halls attached to the major sabhas as well as the ones mentioned by the original poster.
Sri TRS actively promotes new talent through his organization, the Music Education Trust. Now that Sri Kalidas is among the founders of the new sabha Madhuradhwani, one can expect that some upcoming artists may be featured there too, though the stated aim is to offer concert opportunities to more senior artists who are denied them at major sabhas.
Financial aspects have a lot to do with why smaller halls feature upcoming talents. Organizations such as Kapali Fine Arts, Chennai Fine Arts, etc., being able to raise funds primarily during the December season, hold their concerts in these smaller venues. Sarvani Sangeetha Sabha, Nadopasana, etc. have monthly programs only or have their season early in the year rather than in December. All big sabhas have monthly programs now but several of the crowd-pullers have restricted the number of concerts they give and some of them want to perform mostly during the December Season. That is why you see them giving only fundraising/benefit concerts during the off-season and that too in a limited number of instances.
People like Bharath Sundar and N J Nandini gained major exposure through Jaya-TV's Carnatic Idol program; a few others through participation in Margazhi Mahotsavam.
The Music Academy has a rigorous selection process. Recommendations from gurus, reviews of past performances, evaluation by a panel of selectors all play a part in choosing the candidates that are featured by them in the December Season. Pretty much the same procedure is followed by all the major sabhas.
When you consider the 15-day long December program at the Music Academy, there are exactly 15 slots at the junior (12 noon) slot and so competiton is tough. Given that you now have 3 winners of the Carnatic Idol program, they have chosen to stick with Idol I rather than Idol II or III this year.
Junior artists have to learn how to market themselves and keep themselves in the public eye. Sabhas in Tambaram, Pozhichalur, Pammal, Selaiyur, Chromepet, Villivakkam and Perambur give them that chance. Whether they can move up from these suburban sabhas to Mylapore-based ones such as Kapali, GK Foundation, Naada Inbam, Nadopasana, etc., depends on their horoscope. From then, the move to Narada Gana Sabha and Music Academy and prime slots there is determined by the listener's horrorscope! Because, by that time, these young talents have settled on a Unique Selling Proposition to appeal to the Mylapore mamas and mamis, be it abhangs, folk songs from Bengal, Arabic maqams or the deep grunts of a sperm whale.
Management of big sabhas usually have the attitude that when they want your opinion, they will give it to you. So it is quite doubtful that they take advice from anyone on what artists to feature. However, several good performances at the smaller sabhas may impress the selectors who may choose to seature such an an artist at their big-name sabha.
