As we have done in the last three years, we attended this year’s Cleveland Aradhana also with great interest and anticipation. Thanks to the extraordinary job done by the organizers, we were not disappointed. Over the years we have seen the Aradhana festival growing year over year and this year has not been an exception. One feels very fortunate and privileged for being able to witness and participate in such an event.

Cleveland Aradhana Committee holds the largest Indian classical music festival in North America beginning on the Saturday of Good Friday week end every year (this year on April 10th). The festival features about 40 concerts over a 10 day period. Several top artists (this year over 50) are invited from India to give performance in the festival. This year, the Aradhana is in its 27th year. The whole festival is run by dedicated volunteers and derives its financial support from donations and sponsorships. Until last year all the concerts were free to everyone; however, this year some selected concerts were ticketed with the hope of raising enough money to cover the mounting expenses.

It all began 27 years ago by the combined effort of 3 great individuals, Cleveland V.V. Sundaram, Cleveland Balasubramaniam and Toronto Venkataraman. From the initial days of running for a day in a house setting, today it has grown to 10 full day event conducted in the halls of Cleveland State University. Today every artist from India regards it as a privilege to perform at Cleveland Aradhana. One of the artists even proclaimed Cleveland as the Thiruvayur of America!

Apart from the concerts, the Aradhana Committee honors senior artists for their service/achievement with awards such as Sangeetha Ratnakara. This year’s award has been presented to Prof. T.N. Krishnan. Also, every year a “Best Teacher” award is awarded to a music teacher from North America. To garner interest in the younger generation, they hold music competitions for different age groups. The number of participants in these competitions has reached such a level that the organizers have to hold 3 parallel sessions to finish the competitions in time.

The quality and the level of music of the participants are generally very good as expressed by such judges as Ravikiran, Sanjay Subrahmanyam and S. Varadarajan. They have repeatedly mentioned over years that the quality of the music [from the kids] here is as good as that in India if not better.

Every year the competition is held on Good Friday (April 9th this year). Since there were more than 180 contestants this year, the competitions were held in 3 different halls simultaneously. There were 3 age groups: sub junior (8 & below), junior (9-14) and senior (15 & above). Music categories included vocal, instrumental, alapana, swara kalpana, neraval, and pallavi. Over the years several students of Tara Bangalore and Durga Krishnan from New England area have won prizes in these competitions. This year, Suhas Rao who learns violin from Tara Bangalore, has won three 1st prizes in violin (main, alapana and swara kalpana). He has won 3rd place in vocal neraval (learns vocal from Geetha Murali). Suhas also has been one among the 4 to receive the newly created Gottuvadaym Narayana Iyengar Award for Creativity sponsored by Ravikiran and Ram Mouli. Apart from Suhas, Rasika Murali won 3rd prize in violin (student of Tara Bangalore) and Ullas Rao won 3rd prize in Mridangam (student of Pravin Sitaram). Click here for complete results. V.V. Sundaram rightly summarized the prize distribution ceremony by declaring “all participants are winners because being able to compete in such an event itself is a great achievement! It needs a lot of dedication and practice to get to this level.”

The festival began with group singing of Pancharanta Krithis on Saturday. This is a grand event no one could afford to miss. To see so many stalwarts of music rendering together simultaneously on one stage has been very fulfilling. This year’s special artists included T.N. Krishnan, Viji Krishnan, Mala Chandrashekar, Guruvayur Dorai, T.R. Subramaniam and many others. The group singing program consisted 4 generations of more than 200 musicians including some of the young kids who participated in the competitions earlier.

And this point onwards it is music, music and just music. Group singing was followed by individual singing. The number of requests to give individual rendition was so high that the organizes had to come up with some formula to select only about 50 participants for this part of the program. Impressed by the renderings of some of the young individuals, Guruvayur Dorai commented “In Chennai I have heard people talking lightly about Carnatic music teaching in America. But now I am going to go back and tell them that both teachers and students in America are just great”.

Individual singing was followed by the special of the day – violin by T.N. Krishnan accompanied by 2 other violinists: his son Sriram Krishnan and daughter Viji Krishnan. This was a memorable concert where T.N. Krishnan could energize the packed audience. Towards the end of the concert, T.N. Krishnan was awarded this year’s Sangeetha Ratnakara award.

T.N. Krishnan’s concert was followed by another great concert (vocal) by T.M. Krishna. On Sunday before heading back to Boston, we listened to the first ticketed concert of the Aradhana – vocal concert by Sanjay Subrahmanyam.

All these times, we did not have to worry about food at all. Lunch and dinner were provided and again only volunteer donations were collected. There is a lot more to write about behind-the-scene activities like food, accommodation, transportation etc for the artists. ChennaiOnline has published several articles on various aspects of Cleveland Aradhana.

In all, it was a great experience. We wish we could stay longer to listen to all the remaining concerts. Every music lover would feel greatly satisfied by attending this event and generously supporting it.

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