For a while, I felt I was listening to a vocal concert by a senior vidwan at the Music Academy, Chennai. The 170-minute Carnatic music performance included the immortal lyrics of renowned composers – Arunagirinathar, Purandara Dasa, Thyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshidhar, Syama Sastry, Jayadeva, Papanasam Sivan….
The venue: the beautiful auditorium of Saint John High School at Shrewsbury, near Boston, USA. The music hall was full with over 300 rasikas (ardent followers) who listened with rapt attention and frequently expressed their appreciation through thunderous applause.
As one who has been listening to quality music for 70 years, I could not still believe it was the first full-fledged music concert, the Arangetram, of 14 year old Sravya Tanikella.
Sravya is a prodigy who started learning Carnatic music from age four under the guidance of Bhuvana Ganesh in Boston and over the last six years from Yogam Santhanam. The latter had received training under music maestros Maharajapuram Santhanam and M L Vasanthakumari and has instilled the love for music in Sravya. I also observed Sravya’s passion and long hours of practice to ensure perfection. The Guru arrived in the US a couple of weeks in advance for rigorous practice even while Sravya was going through the final days of exams for class ten.
Yogam and MLV belong to the legendary G N Balasubramanian (GNB) school of music. As a rasika of GNB, I could re-live the carefully structured build-up of the programme from the start by the lilting Varnam in Malavi raga, through Dikshitar’s invocative Maha Ganapatim, GNB’s obeisance to Goddess Saraswathi, the immortal piece of Mysore Vasudevachar’s Brochevarevarura…
The elaborate rendering of pieces in the raga Saveri and Kalyani reached the crescendo in the ragam , thanam, Pallavi in the raga Ranjani. In GNB style, this included swara ragamalika.
The GNB-MLV structure continued with lighter pieces (thukkadas) and a thillana of Lalgudi Jayaraman.
The quality of the performance was significantly enhanced by two senior accompanists: Rajeev Mukundan and Papanasam Kumar. Rajeev, who had long years of training under violin maestro A Kanyakumari, received frequent acclamation, especially for his delineation of the ragas Vasantha, Saveri and Ranjani.
The percussion support was provided by Papanasam Kumar, disciple of Kumbakonam Rajappa Iyer and Umayalpuram Sivaraman. With his thorough knowledge of the kritis, he played to the lyrics to perfection. His manner of ending each piece with a crescendo won thunderous applause.
I referred to Sravya as a prodigy. A couple of years ago she competed at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana Competition and won the first prize as she has done in several other local competitions. She also did her debut in Bharathanatyam along with the sister Sruthi in 2015. Also academically brilliant, Sravya is active in her school as well as in the community. She has been elected President of the Northborough-Southborough Interact Club in the footsteps of her sister Sruthi.
Much of the credit for these brilliant young stars should go to their parents Jyothi and Anand Tanikella. Their passion, yen for details, meticulous planning and execution had a big part in the grand success of the Arangetram.
I saw a large contingent of the local community, all with high professional attainments, busy decorating the beautiful hall, attending to the minutest details of acoustics, stage decoration, photography, food…The programme was webcast live and instantly added to YouTube.
It is another tribute to the perfectionist Dr Anand Tanikella, Vice President, Saint Gobain Research, Boston.
Remember the passion with which he built the global research unit of Saint Gobain at the IITM Research Park?
