Season 2009

Period taken into consideration: 3rd December to 12th January
Number of concerts sampled ~ 35

i. Best Concerts (in no particular order)
Almost all evenings I was in raga sudha and they were all thoroughly enjoyable concerts. I am not able to decide which to list.

ii. Best Singular Renditions (in no particular order)
evarikai - V Subramanian & Palai Ramachandran at Raga Sudha
nekkurugi - Sangeetha Sivakumar at BVB
nIrajAkshi kAmAkshi - Prasanna Venkataraman at MA
cEta srI - Ritha Rajan at Raga Sudha
moratOpu - Rama Ravi at Raga Sudha

iii. Best Violin Accompaniment (in no particular order)
V V S Murari for Ritha Rajan at Raga Sudha
R K Shriram Kumar for R Vedavalli at Raga Sudha

iv. Best Mrudangam Accompaniment
V Kamalakara Rao for Trivandrum Venkataraman at Raga Sudha
K Arun Prakash for Chingleput Ranganathan at Raga Sudha

Best tani:
Erode Nagaraj, N Guruprasad and Nerkumar Shankar at Raga Sudha for Jayalakshmi Santanam

v. Congeniality Prize for Most Popular Ragam of the Season
Heard many kAmbhOjis and madhyamAvatis during this season. hence, no complaints.

v (b). Raga I Missed the Most during the Season
shankarAbaraNam, sAvEri

vi. People i wish i had heard atleast once during the season.
T N Krishan, R K Srikantan, Parassala Ponnammal, Nedunuri Krishnamurthy, J Venkataraman, Seetha Narayanan, Sanjay, TMK, TNS, Sowmya,Manda Sudharani, V Sumitra, Amritha Murali, Vidya Kalyanaraman, D Vardhani, Prema Rengarajan, Sathur Sisters,

vii. Best Sabha Food
ate only at Academy canteen and liked their coffee

viii. Best Listening Environment
Raga Sudha Hall & Music Academy Main Hall (downstairs)

ix. Word/ Name of the Season:
bore

I pretty much ended up at Raga Sudha Hall on many days and enjoyed almost all the concerts there.

I found myself pretty much unmotivated thro' the season. Had to drag myself to concerts on some days.

Random thoughts:
Ranjit Warrier is a good upcoming youngster and sings very well. hope to find him more often in concert circuits.

Jayashree: her one hour concert at Tamil Isai Sangam. I am still shocked to see that list. She did not hurry, nor did she skip sangatis. Her presentations were crisp and weighty. should find more about her.

Prasanna Venkataraman seems to have got all the more impressive and popular this season.

Jayalakshmi Santanam, into her 70s is still spirited and attends concerts all through the day and gives stunning concerts too.

Attended the last concert of Trivandrum Venkataraman, never knew it would be his last back then.

For the first time I was on stage. Not a concert, thankfully, but a panel discussion. Never knew that, once on stage time flies faster.

Wish I was little more motivated, had some more time, attended more concerts of popular/unpopular/young/old artists and found more people to listen too.