Penn Masala - Fundraising for ASHA for education

This Saturday at Tri-C Cleveland Downtown campus Penn Masala performs a fundraising concert. Check out this link to purchase tickets.

Dr. N. Ramani

Dr. N. Ramani (Flute) and his son (Flute) at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana. For more sketches made live at this festival please click on the label Thyagaraja Aradhana Series below.

Unni Krishnan at Thyagaraja Aradhana

Unni Krishnan (Vocalist) and Arun Prakash (Mridangam) at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana. For more sketches made live at this festival please click on the label Thyagaraja Aradhana Series below.

Veenai Jayanthi Kumaresh

Veenai Jayanthi's performance was one of the best concerts I have ever attended. To learn more about this talented and beautiful musician please visit her website. You can buy her music on itunes (among other legal sites).

This sketch is one among several that I made at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana 2007.

To see other sketches in this series click on the label Thyagaraja Aradhana Series below.

Violinist Nagai Sri R. Muralidharan

Thyagaraja Aradhana

This sketch is based on a performance by Smt. Suguna Purushothaman at the Thyagaraja Aradhana in Cleveland (Cleveland State University).


I think I have made the singer out to be younger than she is. Hope she doesn't mind!

IF:gravity - Music Levitates Us

Musicians in a park

I think I killed this by adding too many details. I shall post this again after I eliminate some.

The Music Messiah in itunes

Great news! Ilaiyaraaja's "The Music Messiah" is available on apple's itunes. Also, pretty soon, you will be able to buy the CD by placing an order at agi music. Check out this link for details.
This photograph was taken in 2005 in Chennai, India.

Violin Concerto

Pen and Ink
? 2005

Violinist

I sketched this musician a couple of years ago at a classical music concert.

Ilaiyaraaja and I

By a strange coincidence the Maestro and my father were both born the same year. The coincidence does not stop there – the same year that I was born, Ilaiyaraaja made his debut in Tamil cinema! One does not need these coincidences to feel a deep connection with the compositions of this genius. Ilaiyaraaja has the capability to enrich one's life not by enslaving you to his great work, but by opening the doors to a whole wide range of music.

When I was a child I was under the mistaken impression that all “new songs” were “bad”. That impression was because my parents would listen only to Thyagaraja Bhagavadhar, Seerkazhi Govindarajan, and other songs of yesteryears. Although I developed a taste for those classics (albeit reluctantly), I could not deny the immense pleasure I derived from the compositions of Isaignani. At that time I did not even know that there was such a composer named Ilaiyaraaja. I would just hear his songs wafting from the radios in the neighboring houses and I would sit listening to them mesmerized by the depth of feeling and melody in the tune.

As I got older and started asserting my independent taste in music, I started collecting Echo cassette compilations. Nothing was dearer to me than those pink cassettes stacked up on my shelf. I would play them for hours on end. I would lie on the couch and arrange the speakers on either side of my head and listen to the intricacies of the doyen’s compositions. Invariably I stumbled upon “How to name it?” and “Nothing but Wind” – the albums that widened my horizon to appreciate the beauty of classical music. Through these albums I understood why Ilaiyaraaja welcomes Thyagaraja, loves Mozart and has his talk with Bach….and a whole new fascination with classical music began. This is what I mean by Ilaiyaraaja opening the doors to a wide range of music. In my opinion, a good composer should whet your appetite for great music – I am greatly indebted to Ilaiyaraaja for doing just that for me and probably millions of his fans.


I had always wanted to see Ilaiyaraaja in person. Imagine my surprise and great joy when a contact I got through a friend told me that I could do that when Raja comes to felicitate MSV and Ramamurthy at Kamarajar arangam in Chennai! It has been my dream to paint some portraits of Raja and I was not going to pass up this opportunity to shoot my own reference photos of the maestro. I promptly bought tickets to the function. I was fortunate enough to take several close-up photographs of the composer. I have used two of those for the sketches displayed here. I am not going to go into details of the function, suffice it to say that it was one heady experience for me to see him, hear him speak and break into a short spontaneous song.

During the recent live concert in Chennai, when the M.C praised Ilaiyaraaja to the skies, in all modesty the composer had replied, “.....apdi ellaam onnum illa, isai kadalil alai pola, alaiyil nurai pola, nuraiyil thuzhi pola, vandhuttu pora thuzhi naan” (.......nothing like that, I am just a speck of dust afloat the froth on a wave in the ocean of Music). That may be true according to him, but that speck is what enhances the beauty of the mighty ocean for me.