Cleveland Aradhana?

mri_fan · Post by **mri_fan** » 09 Apr 2007, 20:48

Any news from rasikas who were fortunate enough to attend the concerts this weekend? Any info about the M. Chandrasekaran or the Cleveland Inagural concert? Did the 30 person concert have any note-worthy components, was it cohesive...or was it a mess? Did they do any swarams?

Thanks

sridevi · Post by **sridevi** » 09 Apr 2007, 21:14

Hope someone out there can post the reviews about the aradhana.
I am also interested in knowing how the student concert went. I found the lessons very very informative and have worked through 4 krithis. the aim is to learn one krithi a month. Some of the lessons are very comprehensive and thorough.
The concept itself was different and am wondering how the synchronisation was in the huge group. Listening to the audio files, I inferred that the violinists would be trained my Nagai sriram and the flutists by Dr.Ramani.
I am also curious to know about the flow of the concert. Each krithi was taught by a different teacher ( and a different style..) was this discernible to the rasika or was it not an issue?

SSK · Post by **SSK** » 09 Apr 2007, 22:38

I am glad I went to Cleveland and spent Saturday and good part of Sunday before heading off to CLE in thick snow fall..

The best part of the Cleveland festival was the inagural concert by 30+ kids.. Trained via technological enablers such as Skype with distinguished teachers in India such as Nedanuri sir, Vedavalli, T R Subramanyam, Chengalpet Ranganathan, Suguna Varadachari, ... the kids did a wonderful job. They were very confident and not afraid of making mistakes. Though the teachers represented various schools and styles (Allathoor to Musuri to Mudicondan Venkatarama Iyer..) the entire concert flowed rather well.

Being the first set of students to do something this big, there was some natural nervousness prior to the concert. I was behind the stage talking to Cleveland Sundaram, when one the kids walked in and expressed concern that there were some coordination issues. In the words of Sundaram " push aggresively, do the best you can. 90% of the people wouldn't know and mind any minor mistakes and the 10 % who find out that you made a mistake doesn't really matter".. With this Sundaram sir gathered all the students and gave the same advice..

But once the kids got on the stage and started with the Navaraga Ragamalika varnam "Valachi" they just lit up the entire auditorium. The details of what was presented at the concert is at http://www.aradhana.org/inaug30/.. I did a get a chance to record the concert and also take some pictures.. I will try and post some of the pictures later this week.

The awrard ceremony that followed the concert was kind of unique this year... They not only honored musicians, but also honoured distinguished vedic scholar Dr. A.V. Srinivasan from Karnataka, who runs a temple (i think) in Connecticut, and has authored a book "The Vedic Wedding: Origins, Tradtion and Practice" (Details available at www.periplusbooks.com). Another distinguished person to be honoured was Prof. E.C.G. Sudarshan (originally from Kerala know for the invention of elementary particles travelling faster than the speed of light).

The best part was every honoree really aplauded the students of the inagural concert, a major boost for "Sustaining Sampradayam".

Overall if any of you did not make it, you can envy me, because you really missed a great live performance and one of a kind in carnatic music.

sridevi · Post by **sridevi** » 09 Apr 2007, 23:03

wonderful! I heard , in one of the lesson files, that PBS might be presenting this concert sometime later. May be the aradhana folks will put the information up on the website.
For those of you who are intent on learning some new krithis, the website SSK mentioned has all the lessons and they are very thorough and comes along with the notations. Some of the lessons are over an hour and are complete in every sense. I, for one, am enjoying learning these krithis. ( am done with 3 krithis and varnam which I knew before. .. at least i thought I did. )
However I only wish I could get them reviewed and get some advice/comments. May be I will post my renditions on this forum.

Sridevi

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 09 Apr 2007, 23:35

Wish I were there too, SSK. A great feat, and from the future of CM too--the kids! Would love to hear and to see them on PBS. Someone please let us know the date of broadcast as soon as it is known. I would scan the PBS program guide too in the coming months. For those of you who want to know what the letters stand for--PBS is America's non-profit public broadcasting station.
Very impressive group of vidwans have trained the kids. Could we give credit to all those who taught
them? I see that Jayalakshmi Santhanam's name is not there. Any other names missed?

sridevi · Post by **sridevi** » 09 Apr 2007, 23:51

Smt.Suguna Purushothaman - The pallavi in Mohanam
S. Soumya - Maa Ramanan -Hindolam
Shashikiran - Brochevarevarura -Khamas

Sridevi

tmt fan · Post by **tmt fan** » 12 Apr 2007, 09:01

Along with other musicians Smt Neela ramgopalof Bangalorealso is teaching CM to a student in canada who used to sing in Cleveland Music festival.quite often.

mri_fan · Post by **mri_fan** » 12 Apr 2007, 09:21

can someone say something about the participants? who were the people? id guess that either rohan krishnamurthy or rajna swaminathan were involved, but im not really aware of any other kids who might have been in it?

vkr85 · Post by **vkr85** » 12 Apr 2007, 10:38

There were two young boys playing mrdangam. Neither Rohan nor Rajna were participating in this. The concert was a good way to illustrate how young students have grown over years of exposure to and training in Carnatic music and much of this exposure was provided by the Cleveland aradhana. It was nice to see the children perform with such confidence that comes from proper training.

sankirnam · Post by **sankirnam** » 13 Apr 2007, 06:02

Do you know the names of the kids who played mrudangam? According to the website, they were trained by Raja Rao.

vkr85 · Post by **vkr85** » 13 Apr 2007, 12:11

They were both trained by Raja Rao and his disciple H.S. Sudheendra. One of them was named Athrey Nadhan and the other I do not recall.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 13 Apr 2007, 20:08

Wish someone from Cleveland or elsewhere would give the kids due credit by posting their names and acknowledging their hard work and involvement in this impressive project...

SSK · Post by **SSK** » 13 Apr 2007, 22:34

I have sent an email to Cleveland Sundaram. But I know he won't get back to me with details until probably end of this month.. So once I have it I will post it.. In the mean time if someone is watching this and are currently in Cleveland then the best thing to do is to catch hold of Sundaram and get the list from him. He will be there till Sunday night..

KarthikV · Post by **KarthikV** » 15 Apr 2007, 01:24

Here is the List of Paricipants of the Inaugural "Sustaining Sampradaya" Concert in no Particular order. Included are the states they are from.

Sriva Raghavan - MA - Vocal
Latika Sridhar - MA - Vocal
Anantha Rao - NH - Vocal
Veena Kumar - NJ - Vocal
Pallavi Mynampati - NJ - Flute
Vignesh Natarajan - NJ - Vocal
Gowri Raghunandan - NJ - Vocal
Saranya Sivakumar - NJ - Vocal
Mahathi Vojjala - NJ - Veena
Shreya Adiraju - PA - Vocal
Radhika Iyer - MD - Vocal
Vasudha Kowtha - MD - Vocal
Vibav Mouli - MD - Vocal
Rohini Ravada - VA - Vocal
Sriranjani Darbha - TX - Vocal
Anisha Gururaj - MO - Vocal
Manasa Suresh - CA - Vocal
Govind Raghavan - CA - Violin
Ramya Ramakrishnan - GA - Vocal
Vivek Chellappa - MD - Mridangam
Athrey Nadhan - IL - Mridangam
Sandeep Bharadwaj - IL - Violin
Adarsh Kulkarni - AL - Flute
Aditya Sarvesh - MI - Flute
Anirudh Sridhar - MI - Flute
Sudarshan Mohanram - MI - Flute
Shashank Subramaniam - MI - Flute
Shruthi Subramaniam - MI - Flute

They did a spectacular job. Congrats to the participants.

- Karthik Venkataraman

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 15 Apr 2007, 07:00

Thank you, Kartik. Each and every one of them has earned our admiration. Easy for us, first generation, to enjoy CM the way we do. Amazing. The second generation has taken to it and has learnt all the songs with devotion to the extent of performing at the ArAdhana! Thanks to all the gurus who taught them the kritis 'long distance'. Once again, kudos to the youngsters. They all deserve the 'EkalavyA' award...

jayachAmarAja · Post by **jayachAmarAja** » 15 Apr 2007, 09:21

Can someone please post more photos/reviews from Cleveland ? Did anyone attend Chengaplet Ranganathan Mama's concert ?

mahesh33 · Post by **mahesh33** » 15 Apr 2007, 20:09

Folks,

I made it to TMK's and TNS concerts. I will post details later today. I will also post some info on Sahana Vasudev, who is abt 10 years young, and performed as the winner of the Aradhana concert contest. She is PSN/Narasimhan's student, apparently.

RaviVeda · Post by **RaviVeda** » 18 Apr 2007, 01:18

Chat with V.V.Sundaram available here

http://www.worldspace.in/shruti/cleveland/apr06.html

meena · Post by **meena** » 18 Apr 2007, 03:01

Deleted

hsuvarna · Post by **hsuvarna** » 20 Apr 2007, 05:26

I was there in the 1st weekend. As usual it was a great get together for CM fans and artists.
It was heavy snow fall in cleveland. We were double excited having not seen snow before.
We stayed in the ComfortInn right opposite of the Cleveland state university.
As we entered the hotel, I could see in the lounge some stalwarts Sri MC, Sri VelloreRamabhadran,
Sri Guruvayur Dorai, Sri ShashiKiran, Sri CV Narasimhan
Ms.Yaamini Krishnamurthy, SriMushnam Sir to remember some. Wow, we patted ourselves to have been blessed with
to have breakfast, tea/coffee etc with them in the hotel. I can't imagine to get so near to all of them in India say in music academy or another sabha. Enjoyed nice sambar and curd rice on Thursday.

Friday was very hectic with kids competitions. Running from one corner to another watching the heavy snowfall.
Children had a chance to sing/play before the eminent people at a fee of $50 per competetion. The fee first time in cleveland, hope, helps the organizing expenses. It will be nice if organizers made a dvd of some good songs/displays
aspiring kids parents could buy it for a nominal price.

Saturday was hectic too. Pancharatna keertanas started around 8.30am and went on until 11.30am. All stars on stage including Smt Sudha Raghunandhan, Smt Suguna.P, Sri TKG, Ravikiran, Carnatica bros, Mayavaram sisters, CV Narasimhan, Sri M Chandrasekharan, Shubhalakshmi to name few...Had the free pongal/upma breakfast and then individual singing started of various singers who came to cleveland. 4'0 clock was the concert by young singers which went for nearly 3hrs. Heavily applauded. List of songs is somewhere. It was followed by harikatha by Visakha hari which I missed.

Sunday started with main conceret by Sri MC and Bharathi. I could only remember the keeravani kaligiyunte (main piece),
kadanakutoohalam. By afternoon we had to leave. Excellent family time and music.

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 20 Apr 2007, 05:43

Anyone care to review the opening and closing dance performances?

ranjan · Post by **ranjan** » 20 Apr 2007, 06:12

meena wrote:i'm sure u will enjoy this clip:)
harikatha by Sidarth - any info abt this lad?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7BkuNsX1dg

Hes a six yr old who learns music from Radha Narayanan, but live in Philadelphia. He is a very talented child. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The youtube link is a must see.

harimau · Post by **harimau** » 20 Apr 2007, 07:08

hsuvarna wrote:I was there in the 1st weekend. As usual it was a great get together for CM fans and artists.
It was heavy snow fall in cleveland. We were double excited having not seen snow before.
We stayed in the ComfortInn right opposite of the Cleveland state university.
As we entered the hotel, I could see in the lounge some stalwarts Sri MC, Sri VelloreRamabhadran,
Sri Guruvayur Dorai, Sri ShashiKiran, Sri CV Narasimhan
Ms.Yaamini Krishnamurthy, SriMushnam Sir to remember some. Wow, we patted ourselves to have been blessed with
to have breakfast, tea/coffee etc with them in the hotel. I can't imagine to get so near to all of them in India say in music academy or another sabha.......

Saturday was hectic too. Pancharatna keertanas started around 8.30am and went on until 11.30am. All stars on stage including Smt Sudha Raghunandhan, Smt Suguna.P, Sri TKG, Ravikiran, Carnatica bros, Mayavaram sisters, CV Narasimhan, Sri M Chandrasekharan, Shubhalakshmi to name few...

From your description, it seems like you must have been in Heaven, what with those little angels singing and all that.

All the more so if you saw C V Narasimhan!

meena · Post by **meena** » 20 Apr 2007, 07:24

ranjan

thanks for the info.

sangeetarasikan · Post by **sangeetarasikan** » 20 Apr 2007, 21:13

Harimau, I think hsuvarna meant Chitraveena Narasimhan (CV for Chitraveena!).

My two cents about this year's festival...

I attended the Pancharatna session and sat there wondering whether Tiruvaiyyaru and Cleveland are in competition! It was absolute cacophony with huge musical tugs of war going on between everyone on stage. One wasn't sure whether the locals and the visitors were competing, or whether it was a male versus female competition. At times the war seemed to be between the singers and the percussionists while at other moments it seemed to be between the people in the back versus the people in the front. Ultimately the winner(s) were the ones directly behind the mike! Don't the loudest always beat the voices that can't be heard? In this respect, Sudha Raghunathan, whose volume had been jacked up so high that it was unbearable, won hands down! Requests for mike balancing fell on by-then-obviously deaf ears! Can't blame Sudha then for not singing in sruti as she obviously was not hearing the ultrasonic noises!

In the individual singing, some kids put up an excellent show. There was a kid (from UK, I believe) who sang a memorable Neevadane gana.

The inaugural programme with the 30 kids brought mixed feelings in me. There were times when I was moved to tears listening to the bright young voices, the hard work those kids, their parents and teachers must obviously have put in, the wonderful changes that time has ushered, and how 2 generations of persevering Indians have successfully brought our culture with us. There were also moments when I was a wee bit disappointed with the quality of music. Not a single vocalist (among the 16) stood out even during the brief moments when they had the opportunity to do so. The one who really stole the show IMHO was the young mridangist (Athrey Nadhan from Illinios). I am certain that the Indian diaspora boasts of more talent like him. But one has to applaud the Aradhana committee for this experiment. If this is taken forward seriously, we're sure to hear some great music from these kids.

The awards ceremony was the next on the agenda. It could have been better organized and shorter had the organizers thought of letting the restless kids on stage go, and put up a few chairs on the stage for the awardees. The ritual of bringing in each awardee (most of them quite old) from the wings, weaving through the children and so forth, took up a lot of time. Like all Indian award ceremonies, save for a couple of the awardees (I think Sheenu Srinivasan and Chitraveena Narasimhan), all others gave long-winded acceptance speeches (after of course promising to be brief!).

Vishakha Hariâ€™s programme which started considerably later than scheduled turned out to be quite interesting. The best part for me is that we now have a bright youngster for this dying Indian art. She sang a bit more than what is strictly necessary for a Harikatha programme, but it was a well put up show. The only major crib that I heard was that most kids (and adults who speak other languages) couldnâ€™t understand her as she spoke almost entirely in Tamil.

I attended a few other concerts too. Will write about them as and when I get some time.

mahesh33 · Post by **mahesh33** » 20 Apr 2007, 21:19

Athrey Naadan's father is a mridangist teacher also..

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 20 Apr 2007, 21:19

Thanks, sangeetharasikan,
Keep them coming...

Facto · Post by **Facto** » 30 Apr 2007, 22:31

Insider feedback - cleveland inaugural concert - a casual chat with several parents disclosed the following facts - the kids learnt through skype with no face to face lessons. Later AS Murali was sent to east cost to teach some kids and did a good job. Suguna Purushottamam was sent to take care of kids in west and midwest. Thiagarajan Ramani was asked to take care of flute. The feedback from the assigned kids is that these two spent all the time trying to make money by taking private lessons for other students and did not train the inaugural concert participants. Jaylakshmi sekhar thought the veena participant. Sudhindran - Srimusham Raja Rao's student spent 15 days each with the two mrudangam kids and thought them. No one was sent to train the violin students and there was absolutely no training given for violin what so ever. It was advertised that TN Krishnan would teach, but not a single class was given. Students in the midwest like St Louis, Texas, Alabama were feeling hopeless and lost as there was absolutely no training provided by Suguna Purushottamam and Thiagarajan Ramani. The results were obvious at the inaugural concert and only students who were trained by AS Murali got a chance to exhibit their individual manodharma talent. The same students were given multiple opportunities and favoritism's for either hosting artists or being core volenteers for the aradhana committee even though their kids did not deserve to be at the lime light multiple times like Sharanya sivakumar, Lathika Sridhar, Vibav Mouli.

pssridhar · Post by **pssridhar** » 21 May 2007, 20:09

The gentleman, who has come up with these comments, has demeaned the massive efforts put forward by the kids involved, their parents, the three vidwans who came from India to prepare the kids for the concert, the music scholars and some extremely well known artistes in Carnatic music (one of whom gave his blessings to the effort inspite of being very ill and I believe, temporarily disabled), Shri VVS and the entire Aradhana organization by casting these aspersions.

This whole thread was brought to my notice just recently. At first I was tempted to take the high road and let the comments of some possibly disgruntled person, passing himself off as a rasika, slide without a response. But, I think that something has to be done about it as these comments spread like a disease giving a totally false impression of the entire experience.

The concept for such a concert, with international tutelage from renowned artistes using technology (which was the concept to begin with and was advertised as such) and a massive coordination effort, started almost a year ago. A few other great performers in Carnatic who were busy elsewhere during the Music season indicated their interest to particpate, in this mode of instruction, in following years as time permitted. Invitations were sent for students of music to join if they wished to, with audition tapes. The final group was selected and the training sessions began in the Fall of 2006.

There were hours of practice every weekend, over Skype, with a famous artiste teaching the intricacies of each song that he/she was handling. These artistes would not have given their time and energy and their blessing to this event if it could be summarily dismissed, the way you have done.

The sheer challenge of coordination over multiple time periods and the overcoming of technical glitches were matched only by the eagerness of the students and the Carnatic luminaries to participate in this program and make it a success.

And during the ramp up to the actual performance, three vidwans (Shri AS Murali, Thiagarajan Sir, Shrimati Suguna Purushottaman) came from India to train the kids. It happened first over weeks, separately in the three geographic regions, and then the final bringing together of the three regional groups at Cleveland in the hours before the concert. I have personally witnessed the hours of practice and the effort they put in with the groups.

The effort in making sure the technology worked and then ferrying the students around and bringing them together for practice weekends in the snow and the long hours of practice that they had (each session of in-person group practice ran about 8 hours or so) with the vidwan are known only to the people actually there.

You might have surmised by now that I am the father of Latika Sridhar, who you imply got extra limelight by hosting one of the Vidwans and being in the core group. I was not in any 'core' group, nor did I host any Vidwan. Our family was just like any of the other families, all eager to do their best, but none of them getting any undeservedly extra mileage out of it. All the kids did a wonderful job and it is you who imply that some of them did not shine.

I hope I have satisfied any issue with the program you might have had in your mind. If you have any further questions please get back to me at [email protected]. I would be glad to work with you in dispelling any doubts you might have. As with anything successful, there will be someone who is upset for some reason or other. With so many people from Carnatic stars to the students to us, the unaccomplished parents, feeling so positive about it and putting in their effort, the program aims to be a continuing success, with further developments, and we want everybody to feel positive about it. My advice is that you get on the positive side, particpate in it, and gain from it.

rrao13 · Post by **rrao13** » 22 May 2007, 18:09

Here is a comment from the father of a son who has not participated in the training (and therefore the inaugural concert). Keeping in mind, that it was a pilot program and the first such inaugural concert, I believe everything went off very well - at least from what I heard. I also believe that the professionals did a fine job. I am proud to say that my son learns Flute from Ms. Suneetha Grandhi in Detroit and when Shri Thyagarajan visited Detroit several weeks before the Clevaland Aradhana, he spent a lot of time with the children. He was truly encouraging and was so focused to train the children. I am fairly certain that the other professionals in other areas were of equal disposition in terms of demeanor, efforts, skills, eagerness to train the children.

I think it is unfair to say that the professionals were commercially motivated. Having interacted with a few of them, I sincerely believe that their love of the art and their interest in perpetuating the art-form is the primary driving factor. Everything has a price tag attached to it - which again is fair.

We, the NRI's are truly blessed to have the services of the professionals from India.

nrityam · Post by **nrityam** » 05 Jun 2007, 21:45

Did anyone see the the opening and closing dance performances?

mridangamkid · Post by **mridangamkid** » 04 Sep 2007, 00:09

Sorry this is bumping up the thread from a while ago but..

I stayed in the Cleveland for the whole week and that was THE BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE.

Not only was I able to listen to unbelievable concerts but I was so extremely lucky too.

I was only planning to stay there for the first weekend because I had the competition and head out Sunday but since I had spring break, I decided to stay the whole week. My parents left on sunday and me an another kid.... Aditya Sarvesh (he played in the Inagural concert as a flute player)... pretty muched roomed together (which made the week that much better).

AS for the Inaugural Concert, I know Arthrey but not the other mridangist, however I never new that his dad is a mridangam teacher.... anyway I thought it was ridiculously good, I was amazed how well my peers were able to play/sing together, I know some people in the Inaugural Concert, and from what I heard, you had to take lessons through skype for I think 4 hours a day every saturday and sunday, and that was for a couple months, I"m not too sure about all the detail but all I know is it was extremely hecktic.

I was able to meet up with Dorai sir (Guruvayoor Dorai) and he pretty much took me in, I tried to go anywhere I could with him, helped arrange rides for him, got food for him if needed me too, I was even able to sit during the T.M Krishna Concert with him, and he invited me to learn from him in Chennai.

I also stayed at the Comfort Inn and it was unbelievable how you could pretty much just go to the tables and eat breakfast with all the biggest starts. It was absolutely a week to remember.

Sorry again for bumping it up after a couple months

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 04 Sep 2007, 00:24

mridangamkid: Your report on the cleaveland aradhana from the field is much appreciated. It is a great way to spend the spring break week at the Aradhana. Athrey's dad plays the mridangam but I do not think he is a mridangam teacher either.

No need to worry regarding bumping up threads. They are there to be bumped up as the need arises.

Good luck with your mridangam learning.

harimau · Post by **harimau** » 05 Sep 2007, 05:46

Mridangam Kid,

Thank you for your post.

That was a breath of fresh air that swept out the odor left behind by the skunk who gatecrashed the garden party.

Thanks again.