Soulful Strings (An Afternoon of South Indian Carnatic Music Featuring Guitar, Violin, and a Percussion Ensemble)

• Performance

• Event Date: Saturday, March 30, 2024
• Time: 2:00 pm–4:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free

UIUC Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Improvisers Exchange, and Spurlock Museum present Soulful Strings

An afternoon of South Indian classical Carnatic music featuring electric guitar, violin, and a percussion ensemble consisting of traditional hand drums, Kanjira and Mridangam. Through a variety of highly intricate pieces, this program will bring a range of flavors from the South Indian music tradition to Spurlock Museum.

Guitar Vignesh is the grandson of Sangita Kala Acharya Shri. T.H.Subashchandran. He learns Carnatic Music from Shri. Delhi Sunderrajan and Shri. Vijay Arun. He is currently a senior at University of Nebraska Omaha where he is majoring in Jazz Studies. He recently received the prestigious Undergraduate Scholar Award from the Presser Foundation. Vignesh has two albums to his credit, Soulful Strings and Bagayanayya.

Shri. Ganesh Kumar is one of the leading exponents of Kanjira, a one-sided frame drum. He is a disciple of Shri. Hari Hara Sharma and Shri. Subashchandran. He frequently performs with many western musicians in USA and Europe. Ganesh Kumar received the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship from the Department of State and taught at various universities in USA. He also teaches various percussion instruments as part of SBAT, Maryland. He has released a signature series Kanjira from Cooperman Drum Company and an instructional DVD titled "The Art of Kanjira".

Aakarsh Dhilip is a disciple of Shri. Ganesh Rajagopalan of the famous Ganesh-Kumaresh violin duo. He has been learning violin for the past 13 years, and initially trained under Shri. Raman Iyer. Aakarsh is a 3rd year undergraduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign pursuing Computer Science and Economics.

Arjun Raghavan is a disciple of Sangita Kala Acharya Late. Shri. T.H.Subashchandran. He has placed first in Mridangam solo, accompaniment, and Konnakol (Vocal Percussion) categories in prestigious Carnatic Music competitions in USA. He has performed in several hundred concerts accompanying many senior artists in USA and the famous December music season in Chennai since 2009. Arjun has been conferred the Yuva Kala Bharathi title by Bharat Kalachar in Chennai. He is pursuing his PhD in Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

This program is partially sponsored by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.