Meet the Millennial Musicians

Deepa Tryphosa talks to four Indian youngsters who are making their presence felt on the global stage.

June 01, 2016 03:51 pm | Updated September 16, 2016 09:43 am IST - Chennai

Keyboard call

Born in Chennai, Vivian Lawrence was influenced by various genres of music at an early age, thanks to the Internet.

“I started playing the piano at the age of four,” says Vivian, who completed Grade 8 from Trinity College London by the time he was 16. In 2011, he teamed up with his close friends from Delhi to form Route 714 — a contemporary rock band. The long hours of practice paid off when Route 714 was selected as the ‘Best Band in North India’ at the Yamaha Asian Beat competition. Vivian also won the coveted Best Keyboardist award at the national level. The very next day, he was offered a job at Yamaha Music and went on to launch the Yamaha PSR 650B Keyboard at five States in India.

Vivian moved to the U.S. in 2012 to pursue his passion. During the past four years, he has worked with internationally-renowned people in music, such as Steven Ford, Shantih Haast, Ron Mathews and Glenn Barratt. Today, he works as a music composer for Theatre 7000, a cutting-edge production for kids delivered on a 360-degree dome with 4D effects. He also serves as the keyboardist and music director at Eastside Christian Church in the U.S. Besides this, he has produced music for several short films and is currently working on a movie with Sony Pictures.

iPad tunes

Navneeth Sundar’s interest in music started at an early age. His grandfather taught him to play the harmonium when he was just six. By the time he was eight, Navneeth was playing in his school orchestra in Tuticorin. He graduated in computer science engineering in 2005 and started working at Infosys Chennai.

There, he had the chance to participate in ‘Paadum Office’, a corporate music competition conducted by Vijay TV, and his love for music was rekindled. In 2008, Navneeth quit Infosys to pursue a career in music. Since then, he has worked with music directors such as Harris Jayaraj, Ilaiyaraaja, Thaman, Devan Ekambaram and James Vasanthan.

He has also directed music for several movies, including Buddy (Malayalam), Guppedantha Prema (Telugu) and Ticket (Tamil). ‘Sindhubhairavi Thilaana’, a song that Navneeth composed for Kappa TV, was listed by Music Aloud as the Best Independent Composition in 2014.

But Carnatic on iPad is what he is known for. Using an app called Animoog, he created a video of ‘Desh Thillana’ on the iPad, which went viral after it was shared by A.R. Rahman.

Navneeth was then invited to give a full-fledged Carnatic performance on the iPad at a TEDx conference. This made it to the Limca Book of Records as the first-ever Carnatic concert performed on an iPad. Navneeth tours internationally with the Navneeth Sundar Ensemble and has a large fan base in the U.K. and US.

Singing his way into Kollywood

Rajan Chelliah’s transition to music from a secure career is along similar lines. Born into a family of doctors, he was on the way to becoming one himself. But if you ask anyone who has known him since childhood, they would say a career in music was inevitable. When the opportunity of skipping classes to play in the school band came up, Rajan promptly took it up. Following this, he dropped out of college to pursue music. In 2014, he was selected to perform in The Voice at Hollywood.

Rajan has since been involved in a number of Tamil movies, playing the guitar and lending his voice to several songs. He worked with Radhan on the movie Vaaliba Raja and is also featured on one of the songs in Chennai 2 Singapore by Ghibran.

He is also part of a Chennai-based band Ratify, which has been featured on VH1 and MTV India. Recently, he collaborated with artists at Disney on a musical and is currently working on his debut album, Nomad .

Piano perfect

Collaborating with artists around the globe seems to be catching on. Though Grammy award nominee Jonathan Wesley is based in Bangalore, he often works with musicians from Asia, Europe and America. Jonathan excelled in music from an early age and became one of the most accomplished pianists in Bangalore. He was awarded ‘Keyboardist of the Year 2010’ at the Jack Daniel’s Rock Awards and ‘Best Metal Keyboardist 2011’ at the Rolling Stone Metal Awards.

In 2013, he lent his talent as a co-composer and instrumentalist to the album Rumbadoodle (by Arun Shenoy), which went on to receive a nomination under the category of ‘Best Instrumental Pop Album’ at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.

The piano and string arrangements on this album were Jonathan’s handiwork. A new album with Arun Shenoy is slated to be released later this year. Currently, he juggles performing, producing and teaching. He plays with two popular bands — Best Kept Secret and Slain — travelling all over India and internationally, performing with them.

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