Sangeetha Kalanidhi SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAN CONCERT

SANGEETHA KALANIDHI SANJAY SUBRAMANYAN CONCERT

Mr Subrahmanyan is a vocalist par-excellence and torchbearer of his generation of Carnatic musicians, He is known for his high-energy and consistently crowd-pulling shows. His music stands out in its uncompromising classical content. . A typical Sanjay concert follows the traditional format. Its hallmarks are a healthy combination of popular and rare ragas, with songs to match. Tamil once dominated the language of the lyrics but nowadays we see that the honours are shared with other languages. It is as though the maestro has made his point and left it at that. The ragam tanam pallavi, which is the test of any musician’s virtuosity, sees Sanjay at his best. The extensive raga alapana is followed by an equally expansive tanam, something that most musicians render mere lip service to. The pallavi, whether in a complicated tala or a simple one, always leaves an impressin on the listener. In 2105 he got the coveted Sangita Kalanidhi award by the Music Academy, Madras. The annual award, instituted in 1942 and given retrospectively from 1928, is the highest accolade in Carnatic Music, something that musicians will give their eyeteeth to receive. The trend in the last three decades has been to award it to ‘veterans’ (read old musicians well past their prime). Sanjay joins a select band of 13 who received it before they reached 50