Carnatic Vocal By Unnikrishnan

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 last day, eminent Carnatic vocalist P Unnikrishnan will perform along with Per Srirama Murthy on the violin and L V V Iyer on the mridangam. Unnikrishnan started learning Carnatic Music at the age of 12 from V L Seshadri, and subsequently underwent the tutelage of Sangeetha Kalanidhi Dr S Ramanathan, Savithri Sathyamurthy and Calcutta K S Krishnamurthy. He attended a special workshop for 6 months on Veena Dhanammal Bhani under Sangeetha Kalanidhi T Brinda and Sangeetha Kalanidhi Dr T Vishwanathan. He is currently training under Vidwan P S Narayanaswamy.

With performances all over India and in places abroad such as USA, the Middle East, UK, the Far-East, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, Unnikrishnan received several awards like Isai Peroli by Karthik Fine Arts, Yuva Kala Bharathi by the Bharath Kalachar, Nada Bhushanam by the Shanmukhananda Fine Arts New Delhi and the Kalaimamani by the Govt. of Tamil Nadu.

He also rendered playback for two songs in Kadalan and Pavithra, which fetched him the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer in 1994. He is an A-grade artist of the All India Radio.

Unnikrishnan is a cricket enthusiast, too, having played for the Tamil Nadu senior division league as a top order batsman and wicket-keeper, but sacrificed the game to devote himself full-time to music. He is at present a member of the Madras Cricket Club and a Life Member of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association.

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.