Carnatica is presenting Contemporary Composer festival on February 29th and March 1st 2016 featuring exclusive compositions of Sangeet Samrat Chitravina N Ravikiran in 35 talas premiered for the first time as a special 2-day series at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore.
Ravikiran, who recently created world history by setting the entire 1330 Tirukkural verses, to tune in a record time of 16 hours, was also the first vaggeyakara to create the 35-tala compositions. He was inspired to do this in Aug-Sept of 1997, in 30 days, averaging more than a song a day. The 35-tala set spans over 3 languages - Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit. They include two varnams and one tillana, the rest being krtis. They cover a range of ragas including ghana ragas like Todi, Kalyani & Kharaharapriya, rakti ragas like Sahana, Ahiri & Anandabhairavi, ragas such as Phalamanjari, Rudrapriya and Bahudari, desheeya ragas like Behag as well as one of Ravikiran's discoveries, Garudapriya. Some of these feature interesting chittaswaras and madhyamakalas. Deities eulogized include Vinayaka, Rama/Krishna, Shiva, Devi and Subramanya. The songs were composed in no specific order of talas.
February 29th, 2016
5.15 pm - 6.00 pm - Inauguration
Vidushi Aruna Sayeeram will preside over the festival and light the lamp.
Dr Umayalpuram K Sivaraman will be the chief guest.
Shri V V Sundaram (Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival) will be the guest of honour.
Programme schedule
6.00 pm Kunnakudi M Balamuralikrishna
6.35 pm Bhargavi Balasubramanian and Srividya Ramanath
7.10pm Ashwath Narayan
7.45pm Nisha P Rajagopal
8.20pm Anahita and Apoorva
Violin - M A Krishnaswamy, Padma Shankar
Mrdangam - R Shankarayanan, Thanjavur Praveen Kumar
Ghatam - Madipakkam Murali, N Guruprasad
March 1st 2016
5.15pm-6.00pm Inauguration
Former Chief Election Commissioner, Shri N Gopalaswamy, who will preside over the second day of the festival
Shri R Seshasayee, Non-executive Vice Chairman and former Managing Director of Ashok Leyland, will be the chief guest.
Programme schedule
6.00pm Amritha Murali
6.35pm Carnatica Brothers (KN Shashikiran and P Ganesh)
7.10pm K Gayathri
7.45pm Bharat Sundar
Violin - M A Sundareswaran, Parur M S Ananthakrishnan
Mrdangam - Thanjavur Praveen Kumar, Sumesh Narayanan
Ghatam - Madipakkam Murali
Khanjira - K V Gopalakrishnan