Young artists offer precocious performances

July and August have been extremely busy months in the classical performing arts calendar, with every weekend taken up by performances all across Melbourne. Of these, two mrudanga arangetrams were held involving three students of Ravichandhira’s Sruti Laya Kendra/Academy of Indian Music recently at the George Wood Performing Arts Centre.

Pragadeesh

Shanmugarajah’s debut concert on July 10 bore all the hallmarks of a polished concert. Barely 15, he did his gurus Krishnan Parthasarathi and Ravichandhira proud, and he held his own against a seasoned vocal artiste of a very high caliber, Smt Padmini Ravi from India. His training in vocal music must have stood him in good stead, as Pragadeesh was able to anticipate and respond to the vocalist admirably; he had his vocal arangetram not that long ago. Smt Padmini Ravi was accompanied on the violin by Dr Hemalatha Rangarajan (who is the younger sister of the well known Mambalam sisters).

The arangetram of cousins Branavan and Nishanthan, held on August 28, stood out both on account of the simply brilliant violin music of the Akkarai sisters, and the lively mrudangam from the debut duo.

The Akkarai Sisters mesmerized the audience with such soulful, superb music that Branavan and Nishanthan had their work cut out. However, like professional artistes, they did not, for a moment, flinch or skip a beat and remained focused on their percussion accompaniment. They complemented the violins so unobtrusively, yet blended well with the music that one sometimes forgot it was their arangetram. Their ‘tani avartanam’ (solo mrudangam rendition) at the end of the kamboji number was