The digital music library of Carnatic classical music in the memory of Sangeeta Kalanidhi Nedunuri Krishnamurthy will be a boon to the students of classical music of the city and the State, musicians and music lovers have opined.
The day the doyen of Carnatic music passed away in the city more than a year ago, former Rajya Sabha member Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad and secretary of Madras Music Academy Pappu Venugopala Rao announced that a digital music library of Carnatic music, including a number of concerts by the Carnatic maestro, would be set up in the city. HRD Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao agreed to take forward the proposal. Dr. Pappu Venugopal Rao promised 5,000 hours of digital recordings of the concerts from the archives of Madras Music Academy, including some concerts by Sangeeta Kalanidhi Nedunuri.
Work is on at a brisk pace at the proposed music library which is coming up at the mini-auditorium in the basement of Rajiv Smruthi Bhavan on Beach Road. It is being developed on the lines of TAG Digital Archives of the Madras Music Academy. It will have 18 touch screen terminals to enable listeners to access the digital archive of concerts by great masters.
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It is a very appropriate gift to the city which is the cultural capital of the State. Such a library should emerge as a place of reference on Carnatic classical music for musicians and researchers, secretary of Visakha Music and Dance Academy G.R.K. Prasad (Rambabu) has told
“From Kalabharati we will be willing to contribute any content to the library,” he says.
“The beautifully located Rajiv Smruthi Bhavan will soon emerge a favourite location for music lovers who want to listen to the recorded concerts, just as they converge at Kalabharati to listen to live performances,” Rambabu has said. “Guru garu was a classicist and advised students to listen to old masters to learn the correct way to sing,” Carnatic exponent and teacher Dwaram Tyagaraj recalled.
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He had immense respect for accompanying artists and would say that performing with exponents would elevate the concert and make it memorable for the audience.
The library would enable the learners to listen to the performance by many maestros. “It will be of great help to students of music if the notation was visible on the screen while they listened to the performance,” he says.
“For an ordinary music lover the library will be a boon as it will help them access and listen to some of the finest concerts,” Perala Balamuralikrishna, musicologist and a close associate of late Nedunuri Krishnamurthy, has said.
The library will be a milestone in the music highway of Visakhapatnam, he says.