Saraswathi Ganasabha, one of the oldest music sabhas in South India, celebrated the annual music, dance and drama festival on the occasion of Dasara for nine days at Suryakala Mandiram in Kakinada for the 111th consecutive year. Prominent artistes from different parts of the South India enthralled the audience with their soul-stirring performances.
The jam-packed auditorium gave a standing ovation to ‘Vaikom’ Vijayalakshmi from Kerala who performed vocal and ‘Ekatantri Veena’ (also known as Gayatri veena, an instrument with single string) for about three hours. After rendering a couple of kirtanas, Vijayalakshmi switched over to the electronic ‘Ekatantri veena’ and performed critical compositions in ragas like ‘Saraswathi,’ ‘Kalavathi’ and ‘Mukhari.’ She also gave a breathtaking performance of popular film songs like Sankara Nadasareeraa Para from the Telugu movie Sankarabharanam and the one Laka Laka Laka from Tamil movie Chandramukhi .
President and secretary of the Sabha Kommireddi Srirama Narasinga Rao and Lakkaraju Seshukumari felicitated Vijayalakshmi.
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The nine-day fest began with Carnatic vocal performance by Ivaturi Harini and Ch. Navitha of the city, followed by felicitation to the renowned violin artiste Annavarapu Ramaswamy.
V. Vamsidhar from Mysore performed on flute on the second day to whom P. Nandakumar (violin), Sadguru Charan (mridangam) and S. Hanumantha Rao (ghatam) provided the instrumental support.
Lalitha Sindhuri and her group’s dance performance marked the third day of the festival. Sindhuri performed to Meera bhajans and Annamayya kirtanas as special items in addition to her regular numbers. B.K. Durga Prasad of Visakhapatnam gave veena recital on the fourth day. With instrumental support from Mandapaka Ravi (mridangam) and S. Hanumantha Rao (ghatam), Prasad performed Thyagaraja and Mysore Vasudeva Dikshitar’s kirtanas on his veena.
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Priya Sisters from Chennai performed Carnatic vocal with instrumental support from M.A. Krishnaswamy (violin), Parupalli Phalgun (mridangam) and B.S. Purushottam (kanjira). They rendered a couple of Telugu poems and light music songs at the end of their performance. Mallela Tejaswi of Hyderabad’s performance on violin and K. Gayatri of Chennai vocal performance marked the seventh and eight days.
Curtains downed for the annual event with the vocal performance of Ramakrishnan Murthy of Chenai. Vankayala Venkataramana Murthy (mridangam), Komanduri Venkatakrishna (violin) and M. Haribabu (ghatam) supported him on instruments.