Strong winds and intermittent rain greeted the thousands of attendees of the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival celebrated at the Cleveland State University between April 21 and May 1, 2011. This being the centenary year of dance legend Vazhuvoor B. Ramaiah Pillai, the festival was dedicated to his memory. The schedule included several dance programmes, thematic and otherwise, in addition to some interesting feature presentations apart from the regular roster of music performances.
The Easter weekend commenced on Saturday with the group rendition of Saint Thyagaraja's pancharatnams led by leading musicians from India and North America. Later that evening, the festival was presided over by president of The Music Academy, Madras, N. Murali, who lauded the tireless efforts of the Aradhana Committe members V.V. Sundaram, Cleveland Balu and Toronto Venkatraman for organising and hosting what is "easily one of the biggest Indian music and dance festival outside India". Mr. Murali also presented the awards to this year's recipients - N. Ravikiran: Sangeetha Rathnakara, Kamala: Nrithya Rathnakara, J. Venkataraman: Sangeetha Kala Sagaram, Savithri Jagannatha Rao: Nrithya Kala Sagaram, Jayalakshmi Santhanam: Acharya Rathnakara, T.R. Balamani: Acharya Rathnakara, T.R. Balamani: Acharya Rathnakara, Sangeeta Isvaran: Kala Rathna, K.S. Sudhakar (Swathi Soft Solutions): Seva Rathna, Nalini Mukhopadhyay (Houston): Kala Seva Mani, Padmini Krishnamurthy (Muscat): Nrithya Seva Mani, Rajarajeshwary Bhat (Houston): Best Teacher Award.
Feature presentations
The festival this year grew even larger than before, in that, an unprecedented 70-programme schedule boasting of close to 110 artistes from India, North America and Muscat was drawn up. Apart from the concerts that are a regular feature here, the Committee decided to do a few things with a twist.
'Sustaining Sampradaya', a concept that showcases American-born Indian children in thematic musical presentations, was projected in an original manner. Young children, trained by musicians in India for more than six months at live lessons as well as those over the internet, sang for professional dancers in a programme entitled 'The Music of Dance'.
Artistes including the legend Kamala, her sister, Rhadha, Narthaki Nataraj, Jayanthi Subramaniam, Sangeeta Isvaran and Anjana Anand, among others, danced to well-coordinated renditions of kritis, padams and javalis.
The second stream of the 'Sustaining Sampradya' presented 'Gems from Karnataka' that highlighted composers from Mysore. This was tied to a featured concert by R.K. Srikanthan which dealt exclusively with Mysore composers.
Music composer and cine singer Shankar Mahadevan, gave a Carnatic and devotional concert, 'Sankeerthana Samarpanam at His Lotus Feet'. Other interesting duo combinations comprised senior artistes Suguna Varadachari and Suguna Purushothaman, Savita Narasimhan and Nisha Rajagopal (the first recipient of The Hindu 'Saregama M.S. Subbulakshmi Award'), Vidya Kalyanaraman and Amritha Murali.
A special one-of-a-kind concert that took the Cleveland Festival attendees by storm was that of octogenarian vocalist M. Balamuralikrishna, N. Ravikiran (chitravina) and Sudha Ragunathan (vocal) on the morning of Easter Sunday.
Madurai T.N. Seshagopalan gave an exhaustive and erudite four-hour performance of the Kamba Ramayanam titled Ramayana Amrutham in which he introduced each kriti with stories and anecdotes with alternate versions, coupled with his own re-interpretations.
An idea that was primarily an inspiration of vocalist S. Sowmya took its form in informal interactive sessions titled 'Something Unique' and 'Something Unexpected' at the Comfort Inn Ballroom over dinner each night, between 10 and 11.15 p.m.. These involved anything from lively discussions between artistes and rasikas to special short thematic performances.
The Cleveland Festival also made a concerted effort to feature more artistes from North America this year.
The Ramayana retold
A singular initiative by the Cleveland Aradhana Committee, the 'Ramayana in Five Parts'was a project that involved scores of dancers and musicians from India, Muscat and North America. Children in the United States researched the story line of of the epic that Carnatic composers in Chennai penned the lyrics and set music for. Seasoned dancers then worked on the choreography and rehearsed for months with musicians before staging the performances in Cleveland. The five episodes, namely, Bala Kandam (music and lyrics: N. Ravikiran; choreography: Savithri Jagannatha Rao), Ayodhya Kandam (music and lyrics: Suguna Purushothaman; choreography: Narthaki Nataraj), Aranya Kandam (music and lyrics: Rukmini Ramani; choreography: Jayanthi Subramaniam), Kishkinda & Sundara Kandam (music and lyrics: Neyveli R. Santhanagopalan; choreography: Anitha Guha) and Yuddha Kandam (music and lyrics: N. Ravikiran; choreography: Rhadha) effectively communicated a kaleidoscope of musical and dance styles that fused seamlessly.
A striking feature was the cameo performances by seasoned artistes - Jayanthi Subramaniam as Shabari in Ayodhya Kandam, Rhadha as Kooni in Aranya Kandam and Narthaki Nataraj as Mandodari in Yuddha Kandam. Similarly, leading musicians Neyveli Santhanagopalan, Suguna Purushothaman, N. Ravikiran, S. Sowmya, Papanasam Ashok Ramani, Gayathri Venkataraghavan lent their voices in some of the episodes. Vocalists Nisha Rajagopal, K. Gayathri, Tiruvarur Girish, Sriranjani Santhanagopalan, Anahita and Apoorva Ravindran proved to be the vital ingredient that glued the music in a telling way.
Instrumentalists Flute R. Thyagarajan, Ranjani Ramakrishnan (violin), Bhargavi Balasubramnaian (chitravina) and Nagai Narayanan (mridangam) formed the core team of the orchestra which provided solid musical support for all the episodes of the Ramayana.
Big gets bigger
The music and dance competitions were the biggest thus far, numbering more than 450 entries, and it wouldn't be presumptuous to state that the competitions help drive the festival attendance each year. They have also given an impetus to the general standard of music and dance in North America. Perhaps the only competition that can credibly be called a 'national' event, the festival draws entrants from all over the country and from abroad as well. Winners of last year's events were given concert slots this year.
Anuradha Sridhar, niece of violin maestro Lalgudi G. Jayaraman, presented her 80-strong student orchestra all the way from Northern California.
One notable new feature was the live web cast. Two providers, E-Kutcheri and iCarnatic provided live feeds of various concerts and programs inviting viewership from all over the world.
Some of the prominent artistes to have performed at the festival are nonagenarian R.K. Srikanthan, Jayalakshmi Santhanam, Alamelu Mani, N. Ramani, Neyveli R. Santhanagopalan, S. Shashank, Mannargudi Easwaran and Nagai Muralidharan. For the whole schedule, please visit >http://www.aradhana.org/
This story was further edited on May 24, 2011.
