Sruti Sarathy with Athrey Nadhan, Samyuktha Sreeram

Sruti Sarathy is a leading Carnatic violinist, singer, and composer, a rare artist who possesses both mastery in the rigorous Indian classical form as well as a boundary-pushing musical vision. She lights up the stage in diverse contexts across the globe, from the sabhas of Chennai to radical performance spaces in San Francisco. Sarathy performs with top touring Carnatic musicians and has received awards three years in a row for her performances at the prestigious Madras Music Academy, India. A Bay Area native, Sruti is a versatile composer for Carnatic, crossover, film, theater, dance and experimental contexts. Her genre-defying original music is a meeting place for Indian classical ragas, cross-cultural improvisational forms, South Asian diasporic history, and poetry. Sarathy is the bandleader of the ensemble Carnatic Crossings, and plays violin in the Carnatic trio Unfretted. She leads the Songs for Many Lives: A Carnatic Diaspora Songbook project. She is a Fulbright scholar, multiple grant recipient and has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, and OneBeat and most recently, Montalvo Arts Center and Emory University. Sarathy’s soulful sound brings out the voice of the Indian violin in a contemporary and imaginative way.

Athrey Nadhan, from Chicago, IL started learning the art of playing the Mridangam at the age of five and is currently undergoing advanced training from the esteemed professional, Sri V. Raja Rao in Chennai, India. Athrey has accompanied several leading musicians including Chitravina N. Ravikiran, Neyveli Santhanagopalan, Vittal Ramamoorthy and Carnatic Music Idol Bharat Sundar, among many others. Athrey has performed in hundreds of concerts across the United States as well as in various Music Sabhas in Chennai and Trichy including the Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha and Raga Sudha during the Music Season in December. Athrey also sings and learns Carnatic vocal music from B.U. Ganesh Prasad.

Samyuktha Sreeram is a rising star of South Indian percussion who performs on the ancient clay drum called the ghatam. She is one of a handful of female ghatam performers in the world. Samyuktha Sreeram is a disciple of the late ghatam and konnakol maestro, T.H. Subash Chandran. She is currently under the guidance of ghatam artist N. Guruprasad and mridangam artist Akshay Anantapadmanabhan. Samyuktha has over 14 years of Ghatam percussion experience and also learns Carnatic vocal music from the vocalist, Charumathi Ramachandran. Samyuktha has played hundreds of concerts across the United States, Canada and India and has earned many music awards in the U.S. and India. Samyuktha has provided ghatam accompaniment for many world renowned Indian artists such as Sudha Raghunathan, Lalgudi GJR Krishnan and Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi, Chitraveena N. Ravikiran, the Akkarai Sisters, VVS Murari and many more.