When you scan a sabha’s performance list, your eyes naturally settle on the violinist and the mridangist. Those are the two names we instinctively check for. But here’s the question this column wants to ask ... Yet they do not always find a place on stage.
December turns the city into a map of sabhas, but Vignesh Ishwar, a Carnatic vocalist with a steady and respected presence in the Margazhi circuit, enters the season looking inward rather than outward.
As Margazhi fills Chennai’s sabhas, a parallel Carnatic concert series unfolds inside a café in Alwarpet, where proximity, timing, and format reshape how the music is experienced ....
This Margazhi season, for the first time in Chennai, more than 200 able, disabled and deaf children, along with the entire audience, performed together as an inclusive sign-language choir ... “Usually, only mainstream students do Margazhi kutcheris .
Organisers said the festival aims to encourage a Margazhi music culture in Trichy, on the lines of Chennai's Margazhi season, while providing a platform for young artistes alongside established performers.
Classical musicians must move past skepticism when it comes to AI. It cannot replace human mastery, but can be a modern instrument for practice, planning and cultural propagation ....
Margazhi may look effortless on stage, but behind it, for sabhas, it is a year-long grind of scheduling, funding, selection committees, technical prep and a constant push to bring in younger rasikas .