Amruthavarshini, the Carnatic music club of National Institute of Technology - Tiruchi, came in for praise from the institute Director S. Sundarrajan during the Institute Day celebrations on Tuesday.
“I have to make a special mention about Amruthavarshini (members) who performed in the great event of Carnatic music at Thiruvaiyaru,” Prof. Sundarrajan said, referring to the impact the music club created at Tyagaraja Aradhana, the annual Carnatic music festival held in January every year at Tiruvaiyaru where the performances of exponents are watched by thousands of ardent fans.
Amruthavarshini popularised classical music among school students recently by conducting Manoranjini ’13 spanning three days.
The event featured a series of performances by artistes from SASTRA University: vocal by Aishwarya Mohan, Shravan Kumar, and Ashwath Narayanan, mridangam by Narayan and Santosh Kumar, and Ghatam by Ramya Ramesh. They were joined by NIT-T students Guru Pranesh and M. Shrikanth (both violin), Srikrishnan (kanjira), and Sreeram Madhavan (mridangam).
The festival encompassed a lecture demonstration on ‘Manodharma Sangeetham – Ragam, Neraval and Swaram” by Vidwan 'Veenai' B Shivakumar.
The classical music competition conducted for the first time for school students attracted participants from established gurkul / music schools from Tiruchi, Coimbatore, Chennai, Kumbakonam and Thanjavur, said research scholar of NIT-TGS Madhusudan representing the organising committee. The Carnatic music quiz also witnessed enthusiastic participation of youngsters and parents alike.
Based on their feedback, the organising committee has decided to have quiz competition as one of the main programmes for next year’s festival.