Carnatic Vocal By Disciples Of Chitra Nagaraj

Nada Tarangam Trust is presenting its 2nd Annual Gokulastami Music Festival from 15th to 21st August, at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan auditorium, King Koti. The 7-day music festival will feature renowned Carnatic musicians like Neyveli R Santhanagopalan, U P Raju and Nagamani, Shreyas Narayanan, T V Shankara Narayanan, D Srinivas, Sanjay Subrahmanyan and Unnikrishnan in concert.

Today, the 5th day, disciples of Chitra Nagaraj will present a group Carnatic vocal recital, with instrumental support from O Rajashekar on the violin and Nemani Pavan Kumar on the violin. The vocalists in the age group of 10 to 14 years, namely Vaishak, Ashwin, Saikrishna, Sindhu, Sadhana, Tripada, Preetha, Preethi, Lohita, Amritha, Alekhya, Lalitha, Pragnya and Aarthi, will start the recital with a Varnam, followed by Muthuswamy Dikshithar's Mahaganapathim, a Thyagaraja keertana, a Ramadasu keertana, a Annamacharya keertana, a Marathi Abhang, and finally the Utsav.

Chitra Nagaraj is a professional singer, who learnt music from the famed Alathur Brothers and Jayalakshmi Santhanam. She is a B-High graded artiste of the All-India Radio. Her husband, Nagaraj, is a Hindustani classical singer and an A-grade artiste of the AIR. They have trained about 1,500 musicians at their music institution, Shruthi Music And Cultural Academy, which was established in 1985 and now has about 120 students.

Aspiring students come to learn music from Chitra primarily after witnessing her concerts and performances, as she does not propagate her institute - that makes the numbers even more impressive. She has given many performances in India, and also abroad at places like Auckland and Singapore.

Nada Tarangam Trust was started on 16th August, 2005, by a renowned mridangam, ghatam and jaltarang artiste Nemani Somayajulu. Somayajulu is a senior artiste who has done his diploma in mridangam from the M R College For Music, Vizianagaram, in 1972, and has since accompanied many music vidhwans like Dr. Mangalampally Bala Muralikrishna, Dr. Nookala Chinna Satyanarayana, Dr. Nedunuri Krishna Murthy, Dr. Chitti Babu, Dr. L Subrahmanyam, Dwaram Durgaprasad, the Malladi Brothers and Veena D Srinivas, to various parts of India. He has also presented a fusion concert of Jaltarang with mridangist Umalaypuram Sivaraman in the USA. He is probably the only male jaltarang player of Carnatic music in the world.

Please contact Nemani Somayajulu at 2703-8383/98663-68186 for further details.