#Shankar mahadevan academy contest archive#
#Shankar mahadevan academy contest series#

“We are planning to hold an online contest of Chowdiah compositions starting October 25. The trust helped set up the website and now plans to popularise it. There’s little else you know about him which is why when Manasi approached the academy for support, we decided to collaborate with IME in creating the online archive, which will be a window to the world of Chowdiah,” says Ranganathan who is founder trustee of the Shankar Mahadevan Academy Trust. “You know, for the great violinist he was, the first thing that one associates with him is the Chowdiah Hall. It was something similar that transpired when Ranganathan heard of the Chowdiah archival project as well.

The result is Naman Sajan Piya, an entire website dedicated to Khan who belonged to the Agra Gharana. “When I met Lalith J Rao and Tara Kini, we immediately offered to host the project,” he adds.

#Shankar mahadevan academy contest archive#

Which is why the Shankar Mahadevan Academy under the tag line Joy of Music decided to start Archive to Alive, in an attempt to ensure that compositions of musical maestros are alive and accessible,” says Ranganathan. It sprouts everywhere but in terms of cataloging its legacy, there’s very little that has been done. “Indian classical music, like yoga, is like a fig tree. Preserving Indian classical music Sridhar Ranganathan remembers the Aha! moment he had when he heard of a project that Hindustani classical vocalist Lalit J Rao and students were putting together of her guru Ustad Khadim Hussain Khan’s compositions. The past few months have been spent in sourcing other memorabilia of Chowdiah,” Prasad adds. “I was able to find 23 of his 50 compositions and we were able to record 17 songs before the lockdown. In addition to his compositions - which have been rendered by Prasad, Bangalore Brothers S Ashok and MB Hariharan and Ranjini Vasuki, the website is also a repository of Chowdiah’s photos and articles written on him. Today, on Teacher’s Day, the archive of Chowdiah’s compositions that Prasad had envisioned comes alive in its digital avatar- It is being launched by the Shankar Mahadevan Academy Trust in collaboration with the Indian Music Experience museum of which Prasad is the director. I eventually learnt the compositions from my mother and Chowdiah’s great grandson, the flautist A Chandan Kumar who sent recordings from Mysuru,” Prasad recalls. “I found two compositions but I needed vocal notations for the songs and there wasn’t anything available online.

Scouring through the internet didn’t amount to much. I was initially hesitant to do it because I didn’t know his compositions- this despite the fact that I in a way belonged to his parampara considering my mother learnt music from his student Prof V Ramarathnam,” says Prasad.

#Shankar mahadevan academy contest series#

“In February last year, I was invited by Bharatiya Samagana Sabha to present a concert on Chowdiah’s compositions as part of a concert series on Mysuru’s composers. While the songs are documented it was the difficulty she had in accessing them that would goad Carnatic vocalist Manasi Prasad to create an archive of Chowdiah’s compositions. What tends to get overlooked or not mentioned as much as it should is the fact that Chowdiah was a deft composer - he’s composed at least 50 songs, mainly kritis and thillanas in Kannada, Sanskrit and Tulugu. A violinist par excellence innovator of the seven-stringed violin Asthana vidhwan in the Mysore court a generous host and benevolent guru a lover of fast cars man who was larger than life - these are some of the ways people who knew Tirumakudalu Chowdiah described him.