Musicians,events,anecdotes and tid-bits

[padmanabha]

_________________
Here is a rising star in violin. Last week he accompanied two well known artistes Aswati Tirunal RamaVarma and Vettikavala Sasikumar organized by Swati Tirunal Sangeeta Sabha and Navarasam Sangeeta Sabha respectively. The violinist received much appreciation from the audience for his eminence. Meet Avaneeswaram S R Vinu.

Hailing from a family of musicians he was initiated into music by his father Avaneeswaram S Ramachandran well known vocalist and the former Principal of R L V College of music. His grand father Krishan Pillai was a known nagaswaram artiste. And naturally his reverberated with musical notes. However Vinu was attracted towards Violin which his father practiced often and had the basic lessons under him. Later he trained with Kilimanoor Thyagarajan a tutor at the Swati Thirunal Music Academy, during summer vacations. Then he joined the Academy and took his ganabhooshanam and ganapraveena.
“Once I happened to hear an audio cassette of Mysore M Nagarajan. I was so fascinated by his style of rendition and decided to learn under him. Again I spent my summer vacations at Mysore and had advanced training under him. My guru and his brother Mysore Manjunath practiced violin in the evenings and I will be one among the few listeners” said Vinu.

He is one of the most demanding accompanying violinists. He has accompanied great musicians like Dr Balamurali Krishna TV Sankaranarayanan. N Ramani, Bombay sisters, Vijay Siva, Sanjay Subramanaian, Trissur Ramachandran, and chitra vina Ravi Kiran. He has performed solo concerts as well. “It gives plenty of freedom. While accompanying one has to under play. One must allow the main artiste to render more. The supporting artiste should only support. If the padantharam of the main and the accompanying artistes are same our job will be easy. It is not always like that. Hence we must widen our repertoire by learning new compositions and to listen to more concerts” feels Vinu.

Vinu has performed at the Chennai music season besides, the Swati Sangeetholsavam, at the Navarathri Mandapam, and concerts organized by major sabhas in Kerala, Chennai, and Bombay. Vinu is wedded to Aswathi a vocalist. He received Lalgudi Jayaraman Award, Gopala Iyer [father of Lalgudi] Award, for the best young artiste recently.