Program Schedule (Sunday, 06/13/2009): 12: 00 - 3: 30 PM Singing Competition on Ilaiya Raja Songs (Adults/Kids) 12: 00 PM Ticket Counter Opens 4: 30 PM Welcome Speech by Vijaya Aasuri, Event’s MC 4: 31 PM Singer Mallikharjun’s introduction & a commemorational tribute to Late. Veturi 4: 32 PM Prardhana Geetham (by Himaja Movva) 4: 35 PM Jyothi Prajwalana by Dr. Kumar Gadamasetti (Chief Guest) 4: 40 PM A Few Words by Srinivas Chimata, Event Organizer 4: 42 PM Introductory Speech on Ilaya Raja (by KiranPrabha, Koumudi.net’s editor) 4: 45 PM First Song starts 7: 00 PM Dinner Break (Food Stalls Outside the Auditorium by Peacock Restaurant) 7: 30 PM Saxophone Performance by Ramesh Maraj (www.indisax.com) 7: 45 PM Second Part of the Concert starts 8: 00 PM Felicitation to the Sponsors 8: 10 PM Second Part Continues 9: 00 PM Mementoes (to Singers, Musicians, Volunteers & Singing Competition Winners) 9: 15 PM Vote of Thanks (by Vijaya Aasuri & Srinivas Chimata) Exclusive Media Partner Grand Sponsor PannuDental.com; Fremont/San Jose/Cupertino PravasVani.com; on KLOK 1170 AM Food Catering Santa Clara/Fremont/Evergreen/Mountain View Other Media Partners
Transcript
Program Schedule (Sunday, 06/13/2009):
12: 00 - 3: 30 PM Singing Competition on Ilaiya Raja Songs (Adults/Kids) 12: 00 PM Ticket Counter Opens 4: 30 PM Welcome Speech by Vijaya Aasuri, Event’s MC 4: 31 PM Singer Mallikharjun’s introduction & a commemorational tribute to Late. Veturi 4: 32 PM Prardhana Geetham (by Himaja Movva) 4: 35 PM Jyothi Prajwalana by Dr. Kumar Gadamasetti (Chief Guest) 4: 40 PM A Few Words by Srinivas Chimata, Event Organizer 4: 42 PM Introductory Speech on Ilaya Raja (by KiranPrabha, Koumudi.net’s editor) 4: 45 PM First Song starts 7: 00 PM Dinner Break (Food Stalls Outside the Auditorium by Peacock Restaurant) 7: 30 PM Saxophone Performance by Ramesh Maraj (www.indisax.com) 7: 45 PM Second Part of the Concert starts 8: 00 PM Felicitation to the Sponsors 8: 10 PM Second Part Continues 9: 00 PM Mementoes (to Singers, Musicians, Volunteers & Singing Competition Winners) 9: 15 PM Vote of Thanks (by Vijaya Aasuri & Srinivas Chimata)
Exclusive Media Partner Grand Sponsor
PannuDental.com; Fremont/San Jose/Cupertino PravasVani.com; on KLOK 1170 AM
Food Catering
Santa Clara/Fremont/Evergreen/Mountain View
Other Media Partners
Padma Bhushan “Maestro” Ilaiya Raja: Ilaiya Raja is a living legend in the South Indian Film Music and he is undoubtedly the most popular music director in the 80’s in India. His original name is Daniel Ra-jayya and was born on June 3, 1943 in Vannaipuram (Madurai Dt.). His first official movie is Annakkili (1976), which was later remade by Singeetam Srinivasa Rao in Telugu as Raama Chilaka (1978), albeit he ghost-composed for some movies ear-lier. In Telugu, his official debut movie was Bhadrakaali (1976). He started off his career as a guitarist in the music troupes of the popular music directors, GK Venkatesh and Salil Chowdhury. During his early days in Chennai, he used to par-ticipate (along with his brothers, Bhaskar and Gangai Amaran) in a lot of stage shows that were performed by SP Balu and his music band and that proximity with Balu established an ever-lasting affectionate friendship between them. Due to his close attachment with S. Janaki (who used to sing most of GK Venkatesh’s songs in Kannada) during his early days, he later used took her as his Aasthana singer for a long time. Ilaiya Raja came into limelight and became an instant youth craze with the dubbed movies such as Vayasu Pilichindi, Erra Gulaabeelu etc during the late 70’s. Starting from Chiranjeevi’s Abhilasha (1983), Ilaiya Raja composed for straight Telugu mov-ies on a regular basis and he since then churned out hundreds of haunting melodies in the 80’s (a few examples are some Chiru movies and most of Vamsi movies) and in the 90’s. In addition, a lot of Kamal Hassan’s Tamil dubbed movies too gave the Telugu music lovers a wonderful taste of Ilaiya Raja’s music. A lot of current genera-tion music directors are “Ekalavya Sishyulu” of this great music director. For a few K Viswanadh’s Telugu movies, he composed the wonderful tunes for the already writ-ten lyrics (in contrary to his regular style of first tunes and then lyrics).
Srinivasa Rao Chimata (Event Organizer & Founder, ChimataMusic.com): Srinivas is very passionate about Telugu melodies and a hardcore fan of SP Balu, P Suseela, KV Mahadevan and Sathyam. He started ChimataMusic.com (Paatha Paatala Parnasaala) in Novermber 2005 to bring all forgotten and no-more-available Telugu melodies to a single place and soon the site has become so popular that SP Balu himself visits the web site on a regular basis to find some of his own songs that he himself doesn't have any more with him. Suryanarayana Guduru (CTO of ChimataMusic.com) and other like-minded music lovers all over the world are helping Srinivas in making their web site as a unique one. Promoting the nostalgic Telugu music (and bringing it a due recognition) is always one of his passionate hobbies. Srini started a series of Telugu musical concerts in the Silicon Valley in commemoration of our great Music directors. As a first one in the series, ChimataMusic.com in association with the local Telugu Association, BATA, successfully organized a musical concert on a popular music director, Sathyam in June 2009. And KV Madevan concert was the second one in the series, held in November 2009 with over 1200 music lovers attending the program. Ilaiya Raja Concert is the third one in the nostalgic tribute series and the special attraction of this con-cert is the presence of the popular play-back singer, Mallikharjun with the Bay Area’s best Live Orchestra of ten wonderful musicians. With enough encouragement from the Telugu music lovers, ChimataMusic.com would love to continue this nostalgic series with concerts on other great composers such as Ramesh Naidu, GK Venkatesh/Rajan-Nagendra, MS Viswanthan, Chakravarthi, and Saluri/Pendyala in the near future. As an extension to the ChimataMusic web site and the series of the musical concerts, he is currently working with a film journalist-cum-writer (Pulagam Chinnarayana) on publishing a comprehensive book on all Telugu Music Directors’ bio-graphical information (with 700+ pages) and the book is expected to be released by SP Balu in Hyderabad in the last week of July. He, along with his web site’s music lov-ers, raised $10,000.00 in donations and handed it over to the 80-year old JV Raghavulu (a popular Telugu music director, who was suffer-ing from a bad financial crunch during the last phase of his life) in a felicitation function (Dr. CiNaRe and Smt. P Suseela being the chief
He hitherto composed for 650 Tamil movies and 125 straight Telugu movies and for a hanful of Kannada, Malayalam and Hind movies too. His recent most Hindi movie was Amitab starrer, Paa. Balu always eulogizes him as a genius music director and it is often quoted that Ilaiya Raja composed all songs for a few movies (such as Anveshana and Preminchu-Pellaadu) with in a record time of just 30 minutes. He introduced the singers Chitra, Malasian Vasudevan, Mano, Sujatha etc to the film industry. He composed for a record number of 54 movies in the years 1984 and 1992 (one movie per week)! He is a recipient of the prestigious “Padma Bhushan” Award from the Govern-ment of India for the year 2009. He received three National awards (Saagara Sangamam – Telugu, Sindhu Bhairavi - Tamil, and Rudra Veena - Telugu) and innumerous Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh State Awards. He is the first Asian to compose a full-length western classical symphony in July 1993 and the one-hour long symphony was performed by John Scott of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. After the senseless lyrics and the transient, cacophonic music started invading the South Indian Fim Industry starting from the mid-90’s, Ilaiya Raja slowed down his movies drastically and has since then been working only on selective movies. He shuns the media publicity, rarely attends any felicitation or public functions and is now leading a simple and quiet life. He was a trend-setter in the 80’s Telugu film music with his unique brand that was quite different from the melodious KV Mahadevan’s style and from the mass tempo-based Chakra-vathi’s style. We can proudly declare that Ilaiya Raja is the LAST LEGEND of the golden era of the melodious Telugu music.
Raghu Malladi (Event Promoter & Owner of PravasVani): Raghu Malladi is a household name in the Bay Area with his popular PravasVani Radio (Bay Area Telugu Kendram Program) on the local 1170 AM station. He stepped forward to be a part of this exciting concert to help out Srinivas Chimata in making the concert an awesome one. Raghu Malladi is a passionate lover of Telugu saahithyam and Telugu movies. He always encourages the Bay Area based Telugu Saahithi Sadassulu, Ashtaavadhaanaalu, Meet/Greet popular writers/lyricists etc, to name a new few. He has played a major role in this event’s publicity by giving an unlimited coverage on his morning Bay Area Telugu Kendram Radio program for about a month.
Singers: 1. Mallikharjun Boda: Mallikharjun is best known as a popular playback singer in the South Indian film industry and an energetic stage performer. He originally hails from Vizag and now lives in Chennai with his wife, Gopika Poornima (another popular playback singer). He first got noticed with E TV's Paad-hutha Teeyagaa program and starting from the year 2000, he participated in 200+ musical concerts for various social and cultural organizations in India. He has hitherto sung in more than 150 movies (Telugu, Tamil and Kannada) and also has sung 1000+ songs for various devotional and private music albums and participated in various music concerts across the world. He accompanied Dr. SP Balu in his USA Live-in-Concerts in 2004 and 2006 and performed for the Telugu organizations such as TANA, ATA in the USA and World Telugu Federation, Singa-pore/Dubai in between 2002 and 2008. Now, he is exclusively coming from India as a lead singer for this Ilaiya Raja show and will also be a judge for the Ilaya Raja Songs singing competition program.
2 & 3. Shilpa Uppuluri & Deepika Uppuluri (of Geetam.com): Shilpa and Deepika are popularly known as "Hyderabad Nightingale Sisters". They sing a wide variety of songs in Telugu, Hindi and Tamil lan-guages including classical, light, devotional, film songs, Urdu ghazals and Telugu Padyams. They have together performed in more than 500 concerts in India and abroad including their performances for various Telugu cultural societies in the US. Shilpa and Deepika cherish their per-formance at the Srivari Brahmotsavalu in 2007 at Tirumala Asthana Mandapam. They have performed in various TV shows and have sung playback for many Telugu movies in the recent past. Shilpa and Deepika currently live in Atlanta, GA and Dayton, OH respectively. Please visit http://www.geetam.com for more information.
4. Sarada Akunuri: Sarada originally hails from Kakinada and has lived/worked in Bapatla, Tirupati and Hyderabad before coming to the United States in 1998. She now lives in Houston, TX. She started singing since her childhood and has performed in a number of programs on AIR such as Yuvavani where she sang Lalitha Geetalu and performed On-Air Natikalu. Sarada started her television career by participating in ETV's Sarigamalu com-petition and also in Gemini TV's Navaragam. After moving to America, Sarada continued to actively participate in performing at a variety of concerts in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi. She performed along with well known Telugu Cinema personalities including P. Suseela, Ramakrishna, Jamunarani, Mallikarjun etc. Sarada currently entertains Houston Telugu community as a radio jockey in a Houston based Telugu radio. She is now in the Exe Committee as a Cultural Secretary for the Houston Telugu Association, TX.
5. Sudha Sastry: Though Sudha was born in Kurnool, she was brought up in Chennai and Mumbai and it is because of her parents' strong penchant for Telugu language, she has a perfect Telugu diction, though she is not fluent in Telugu reading/writing. She has been in the US for 8 years and currently lives in Fremont, CA. Music has always been an integral part of her life. She dabbled with Carnatic music in her childhood and later went on to pursue serious Hindustani classical music under an able tutelage of Pandit Prabhakar Karekar in Mumbai. She has performed in two of the earlier ChimataMusic concerts (Sathyam and KV Mahadevan shows) in 2009.
6. Vamsikrishna Nadella: Vamsi was born and brought up in Hyderabad and his roots are from Nellore. He is very passionate about music and singing and is also an actor who is very active in the local Silicon Andhra organization. Born in a family of artists, he picked up most of his singing skills from his mother and acting skills from his father. He played an instrumental role in the ChimataMusic's KV Mahadevan concert's coordination work in 2009 and since then has become an integral part of the ChimataMusic's concert administration team. Currently residing in Sunnyvale, he is learning Carnatic music from a well renowned guru and is pursuing his Musical Journey.
7. Narayanan Raju: Narayanan, a versatile singer, hails from Hyderabad and lives currently in Santa Clara, CA. Moving to the bay area gave him an opportunity to restart his Carnatic music training with Smt. Jayashree Varadarajan. Since then he has been a regular performer in the bay area giving several concerts and programs. He is an active member of local SiliconAndhra org and volunteers in supporting audio for several Silicon Andhra pro-grams. He recently sang as a playback singer for the Telugu movie "Prasthanam" (released in April’ 10).
Chorus/Track Singers: Prasad Mangina, Prasanthi Vavilikolanu, Sailaja Bhagavathula, Sireesha Palla, and Sri Vidya Chavali
Musicians: 1. Satya Vaidyanathan (Percussions - Tabla): Satya makes a fine Tabla player with no formal training. Along with being a percussionist, he also sings ghazals in its traditional form. Satya's other interests include long distance running and volunteering for Team Asha with whom he has been training and running marathons for the last four years. He performed in the ChimataMusic’s earlier shows ( Sathyam’s in June 2009and KV Mahadevan’s in November 2009).
2. Balaji Mahadevan (Percussions - Tabla/Dholak/Mridangam): Balaji Mahadevan is an accomplished percussionist in the bay area and has been playing Mridhangam and Tabla since the age of 12. He has accompanied many leading artists in Chennai and in the US and has also played for many cassette/CD recordings and TV shows. He plays for dance arangetrams, wedding functions, and the dance ballets in the Bay Area. He performed in the ChimataMusic’s earlier shows ( Sathyam’s in June 2009 and KV Mahadevan’s in November 2009).
3. Arun Narasimhan (Percussions - Pads/Drums): Arun is a completely self taught drummer, with a solid sense of rhythm. He is one of the Bay Area's top drummers in the Indian music scene. He has performed for the top bands in the bay area like Thillana, Pallavi, Raagalaya, and is also part of the Kansas Raja music troupe, per-forming shows across America. He performed in the earlier KV Mahadevan concert in November 2009.
4. Rajagopal Iyer (Percussions - Congos): Raj is a trained Tabla player and plays the percussion instruments such as Tabla, Dhol, Dholak and Congos. He has a strong sense of rhythm and uses his skills to play a variety of instruments and sounds on his Hand-sonic. He has performed with various bands in the Bay Area. This is going to be the first show for Raj with the ChimataMusic Band.
5. Krishnamurthy Kalvai (Melody - Keyboard): Kishmu is one of the most admired keyboardists in the Bay Area. He has been actively performing for Thillana, Pallavi, Ragalaya, Kansas Raja group and many more. While working for bands, he transcribes notes and chords to songs and helps musicians stay coordinated. His talent, knowledge and team spirit have earned him a special place among bands both within and outside Bay Area. He performed in the Chi-mataMusic’s earlier shows ( Sathyam’s in June 2009 and KV Mahadevan’s in November 2009).
6. Nagaraj Varadharajan (Melody - Keyboard): Nagaraj is one of the best keyboard players in the Bay Area. During his college days, he started with a band from REC-Trichy. He has played for a variety of bands that play Tamil, Telugu and Hindi popular music all across the USA. He performed in the ChimataMusic’s earlier KV Mahdevan’s concert in November 2009.
7. Ashwin Krishnakumar (Melody - Flute): Trained in Carnatic classical flute by Sri A.V Prakash in Mysore and by Sri. B.N Suresh in Bangalore and recognized with a scholarship from the Central Govt. of India (CCRT) to pursue an advanced training in flute, Ashwin is one of the best Flute players in the Bay Area. He per-formed in the ChimataMusic’s earlier shows ( Sathyam’s in June 2009 and KV Mahadevan’s in November 2009).
8. Farhan Mohamed (Melody - Bass Guitar): Farhan Mohamed enjoys playing bass, finger-picking style guitars and keyboards. He holds degrees in audio engineering, music production and computer music and currently works as a music engineer at the bay area synth company, Muse Research. He performed in the Chi-mataMusic’s earlier KV Mahadevan’s concert in November 2009.
9. Renison Macwan (Melody - Lead/Rhythm Guitar): Renison has not learnt from any Guru, but learnt the basics from his elder brother. In the Bay Area, he played a few band such as Thillana and Andaaz, and many other singers too. This is going to be the first show for Renison with the ChimataMusic Band.
10. Ramesh Maraj (Melody - Saxophone): Ramesh Maraj is a virtuoso saxophonist who has performed nationally and internationally and has released two CD's of instrumental music. He has performed for Hollywood Movie Director M. Night Shyamalan. Ramesh was the featured artist for the Indian Press Corps at the United Nations. He was invited to showcase his talent in Beverly Hills, CA for CNN's Anderson Cooper and Larry King's benefit. Ramesh can play classic Bollywood, popular hits and a great blend of western music as well. Ramesh has a Bachelors in Music and a Masters of Science in Education. Visit IndiSax.com for more information. This is going to be the first show for Ramesh with the ChimataMusic Band.
