Chennai: Every season there is something for the rasikas to look forward to. And the December music festival only gets bigger and better every year in Chennai. Like earlier years, we have a lot of people coming to Chennai for the Music festival from different parts of the World.
The stars of Carnatic music are being awarded with prestigious titles by various organizations and sabhas. A sneak peek into the list of awardees and titles Sangitha Kalanidhi — Sudha Ragunathan
— The Music Academy Gaana Padhmam — Sanjay Subrahmanyan — Brahma Gana Sabha Sangeetha Kala Sarathy — Chitravina Ravikiran — Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha Isai Peroli — Nisha Rajagopal — Karthik Fine Arts.
Apart from the awardees, vocal concerts of some of the popular stars have consistently pulled a lot of crowd. The response to vocal concerts have been far greater than instrumental solos.
Compared to the previous years, the star singers have brought down their concerts this year.
Amidst the female artists, stars to look out for this season are Sudha Ragunathan, Bombay Jayashri Nityashree Mahadevan and S Sowmya. Closely following them are Gayathri Venkatraghavan, Nisha Rajagopal, Amritha Murali and K Gayathri.
K. J. Yesudas is one artist who continues to cast his magic spell on his rasikas for over several years now. Sanjay Subrahmanyan likewise has a huge following. T. M. Krishna like the last year has decided to make his concerts open to all. He is yet another major crowd puller. Amongst the younger generation, Sikkil Gurucharan, Abhishek Raguram and Saketharaman have garnered a lot of acclaim.
Seasoned artists N. Vijay Siva and Neyveli Santhanagopalan are performing actively yet again this season. Artistes from out of Chennai, like Pantula Rama and Shertalai Ranganatha Sharma among the seniors and Aishwarya Vidya Ragunath among the juniors have carved their own space in the music season.
This season also promises to be good for artists like Suryaprakash and Gayathri Girish who have been in the field for many years now. The veterans of Carnatic music are still going strong. Some of the super senior artistes that would be performing this season include T. N. Seshagopalan, T. V. Sankaranarayanan, R. Vedavalli, T. N. Krishnan and R. K. Srikantan
The sibling concerts are becoming more and more popular every year with Ranjani-Gayathri and Priya Sisters drawing a huge crowd. Similarly, the Malladi Brothers, Hyderabad Brothers, Carnatica Brothers and Trichur Brothers are doing exceptionally well.
Some of the instrumental greats to look for this December are Chitravina Ravikiran, Mandolin Srinivas, S. Shashank and the Lalgudu Siblings GJR Krishnan-Vijayalakshmi.
Ramakrishnan Murthy, V. Shankaranarayanan and Sandeep Narayanan are artistes who have migrated from different countries to India and have created a great impact here in the music scene. Other stars from the gen next include Bharat Sundar and Sriranjani Santhanagopalan.
Young musicians to look out for this season are Rithvik Raja, V. Deepika and N. J. Nandhini , performing about a dozen concerts this season Though the list is not exhaustive the trend for this season pretty much is summed up. However, we hope to hear many more names that are good enough and could be reckoned with.
Hope the rasikas turn out in large numbers to listen to new artistes besides their favorites and popular stars of Carnatic Music.
