Mar 2012 monthly concert

Priyanka Chary (veena)

Priyanka Chary started learning the veena at the age of six from her father, Sri Srikanth Chary, who is a disciple of the music legend Lalgudi Shri G. Jayaraman. Priyanka has performed in several Bay Area venues, such as the SIFA Thyagaraja Aradhana, Livermore Temple, and the Pleasanton Youth Music Festival. She has competed in several regional and national music competitions, like the Cleveland Thygaraja Aradhana and the Papanasam Sivan Competition, and won awards for krithi rendition, alapana and kalpana swarams. Priyanka is a member of the Carnatic Music Instrumental Ensemble (CMIE) group, and has given performances at the Asia Pacific Music Festival and recorded segments for the Swara Lahari television show as part of this ensemble. In addition to pursuing her passion for the veena, Priyanka learns Carnatic vocal music from Smt. Hema Sista and bharatanatyam from Smt. Nirupama Vaidhyanathan.

Vignesh Venkataraman (mridangam)

Vignesh Venkataraman, a freshman at Stanford University, is a mridangam artist hailing from Umayalpuram Sri. K. Sivaraman’s school of music. Vignesh was initiated into playing mridangam by Sri. Anand Iyer, also from the same school. For the past 5 years, Vignesh has been traveling to India every summer undergoing advanced training under the tutelage of Umayalpuram Sri. K. Sivaraman. Vignesh has accompanied various artists in concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has participated in competitions at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana and has won several prizes there.

Vignesh is also learning vocal carnatic music from Smt. Meena Kothandaraman, a disciple of Sri. M.S. Anantharaman, and more recently from violinist Sri. R.K. Shriramkumar.

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Kethaki Varadan (Vocal)

Kethaki Varadan is a disciple of Dr. Padma Rajagopal, who has learned music from many gurus, like Padmasri D.K Jayaraman and Sri S. Rajam. Kethaki has been learning music for the past 7 years and came under the guidance of Padma Rajagopal a few years ago. Kethaki gave her first music performance at Nandalala Mission in June 2011.

She also learned bharatanatyam from Nirupama Vaidhyanathan, artistic director of the Sankalpa school of dance. Kethaki is currently a freshman at UC Berkeley.

Parthiv Mohan (violin)

Parthiv Mohan is a vocal and violin student of Anuradha Sridhar of Trinity Center for Music. He has won several awards in the Cleveland Aradhana and was a western region finalist at the Carnatic Idol USA in September 2011. A 12th grader at Saratoga High School, Parthiv has trained for over a decade in western classical violin and enjoys many genres of music.

Sanjay Chandrasekar (mridangam)

Sanjay has been learning Mridangam from Shri. Ramesh Srinivasan, Artistic Director of Sarvalaghu percussion school in San Jose, for the past seven years. He had his Mridangam Arangetram during Sep 2010, been blessed to accompany Isai PeroLi Shri. Neyveli Santhanagopalan as part of this event. Since his Arangetram, Sanjay has been providing Mridangam accompaniment for various events at Nandalala, Silicon Andhra, Gamakam Foundation, SIFA Thyagaraja Day to name a few and at various temples in the bay area. Sanjay also learns vocal Carnatic music from Shri. Shreyas Narayanun, disciple of Padma Bhushan Shri. P. S. Narayanaswamy. Sanjay is an honor roll junior student at Mission San Jose High. His other hobbies include Robotics and Speech & Debate. He is getting trained to receive his Martial Arts Black-belt sometime during summer/fall this year.

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Nishevitha Ramesh (vocal)

Nishevitha is a 9th grader at Mission San Jose High School. She has been learning music since the age of 5 for the past 9 years. Nishevitha is currently getting trained under the tutelage of Dr. Vijayalakshmi Subramaniam from Chennai after the initial Blessing from the Bay Area teachers Smt. Anu Suresh, Smt. Geetha Iyer and her aunt Smt. Poornima Krishnamurthy. She has performed in Cleveland Sustaining Sampradaya Thyagaraja Festival for the last 4 years and has won the music competitions in Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival and Papanasam Sivan Festival. Nishevitha has perfomed in Tiruvaiyaru on the Bagula Panchami/Thyagaraja Aradhana day in the year 2010. She regularly performs in the SIFA, Papanasam sivan, Rama Navami, LOTUS, Carnatic Chamber Concerts CCC-Fremont, Annamacharya, Muthuswami Dikshidhar Day celebrations, Margazhi Utsavam at Fremont. Nisha learns Western Violin and gives Concerts regularly. She was selected to sing in the Fremont Church Choir in 2010. She loves to play Cello, Piano, Guitar, writing articles for Tri-City Voice Newspaper and compose music in her spare time.

Parthiv Mohan (violin) - see above

Sanjay Chandrasekar (mridangam) - see above