The Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha’s ‘School of Performing Arts’ started off with 30 students and two teachers in 2004. Today, as the sabha celebrates its 10th anniversary, the school boasts of 800 students with 17 teachers. The sabha’s pride, apart from its annual festivals, workshops and Awards, remains its school. Its foundation and diploma courses in music benefits from a meticulous syllabus chalked out by doyen R.K. Srikantan. “We have deliberately designed a heavy curriculum of study, to benefit our students taking the Karnataka Government Music exams too,” says sabha president Dr. R. Balasubramaniam, recalling how four of them, including himself and industrialist Alagappan, DGP K.C.K. Raja and advocate Lanka Krishnamurthy, set up the Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha that was inaugurated in 2004 with a complex that housed a school and an auditorium, the Purandara Bhavana. Almost every stream in Carnatic and Hindustani, including the keyboard and classical dance is being taught there.
The sabha’s anniversary celebrations will commence at 5 p.m. with a ‘symphony’, to be followed by a Bharatanatya performance by danseuse Divya Ravi who will take up Purandaradasa’s kritis.
