nashville-the music city.. an american mridangist. t

[gobilalitha]

while my son.Mohan Balasubramanian( kamalamba for forumites) and his wife were post doctorals at Vanderbilt university, nashville, a decade back, we went there. we found it to be a small but beautiful city,plenty of music stalls patronised by lovers of old country music. a beautiful vinayaka temple where there used to be music classes. does the tradition continue? there we met an American mridangist, trained to the level of accompanying musicians from India. I forgot his n ame. he once accompanied none other than SRI TRSubramanian. you can guess the standard of the mridangist. I s he still continuing to perform in other big cities as well? gobilalitha

[mri_fan]

http://dpnelson.web.wesleyan.edu/index.html

This might be the man who you refer to. To my knowledge, he is the only american mridangam artist who could have accompanied. He performed at Cleveland 2 years ago, and he plays pretty well.

[Nick H]

David has a doctoral thesis in mridangam to his name, an analysis of the thani. He used to participate on Rec.Music.Indian.Classical, and arranged a copy of it for me.

He was here in Chennai for the 2006 season and played several concerts; I think I saw two. My wife heard him talking to his driver afterwards and said his Tamil is good too!

[mahavishnu]

David was on the faculty UMass in Amherst. He spent a lot of time in residence training with T Ranganathan and Viswa at Wesleyan (and later with Ramnad Raghavan). He was the default accompanist for all visiting Indian musicians that came to Connecticut in those days. I was fortunate to see many good concerts of his since I lived in New Haven, CT for a better part of that decade.

I am quite sure that David did not live in Nashville though, although I don't think Gobilalitha meant that. He is still actively playing concerts and more importantly is well known for being an excellent teacher.

The only other American mridangam player I can think of is Frank Bennett (married to Dr S Ramanathan's daughter Geetha). He is also an excellent percussionist. However he has been very busy in hollywood to play in the concert circuit for Kutcheris. Frank had some connection to Wesleyan as well from the period that V Nagarajan was there. At that time in CT, L Shankar was doing his PhD thesis, John Higgins was alive and John McLaughlin was learning to play the veena from Prof Ramanathan.... Other teachers in residence included KVN and Ramnad Krishnan. The atmosphere must have certainly been interesting.

[shankarabharanam]

Mr. David is a very nice person...He was here during december 2006 and i had the opportunity of meeting at his RA Puram residence...He is from Univ of Amherst and he doesn't reside in Nashville.
@Gobilalitha- My uncle used to reside at Nashville till Dec 2006 and i remember him telling experiences of music sessions at the this Ganesha Temple..So guess its still on

[ajit]

There was another good mridangam player at Nashiville - Chris(forgot his last name). He moved to LA some years back.

ajit.

[VK RAMAN]

Is Mahadevan still not in Nashville? I like his bhajans at the temple.

[ajit]

Mr. Mahadevan is still in Nashville and he continues to sing(I dont know specifically about the bhajans at the temple).

ajit.

[cacm]

It looks like the person being described is David Nelson who was at Weslyan university in Middletown, CT. He has been in all the places described in these discussions& has played at Cleveland also in the past few years. VKV

[rshankar]

Mr. Mahadevan is still in Nashville and he continues to sing(I dont know specifically about the bhajans at the temple). ajit.

Is this Dr. Shankar Mahadevan, husband of bharatanatyam dancer Monica Cooley in Nashville, TN?

[gobilalitha]

exactly, my dear Watson. recenly ,he was in India for the Dec season, he, a talented singer performed at chennai, bangalore, mysore .myself , mrs Lalitha(mrs gobilalitha for forumites), jayaram, anusha , forumiets attended the performance ai IISc., bangalore gobilalitha