Anu and the magic Violin

These intros do not do any justice. Unless you listen to her music, there is no way you can fathom her talent. Anyway, here is the brief bio:

Anuradha Sridhar is the daughter and disciple of Srimathi Brahmanandam and the niece of the violin maestro Lalgudi Sri G. Jayaraman. She began her training in music at a young age of five and gave her maiden performance in Bangalore at the age of ten. In the course of her career in music, she has performed around the world with a number of legendary artists Besides live performances, she has recorded for several music albums, performed for the background score in a Hollywood movie and lead a team in the creation of a CDROM title "Thyagaraja, The evolution of a Musician saint".

As accompanist Anuradha was awarded the best violinist awards by the Music Academy for her performances in their concerts during the years 1979, 1982, 1984 and 1999. The concert of 2000 in the Music Academy by Anuradha and Srimathi got the best instrumental musician award of the year for the duet. Anu currently is settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and is an established Carnatic violinist and vocalist here. She also teaches violin.

I lerned about Anu from Arthi. Her daugher is a disciple of Anu. I tried to contact Anu and she agreed. however, she had no free time. About 3 weeks before I was about to start my trip to Indian, I was lucky enough to get some time with her. She played sindhubahiravi ragam for my album song "Kadal". After the main bits were recorded her I requested her to play something in the raga and she did. It brought tears to my eyes. It was haunting. I did not have the heart to throw away anything that she played. So I included everything in the song and the 6 minute song "Kadal" became 9 minutes. It is an artistic freedom that I took to make the song that way. I also felt that Carnatic violin is not represented much in the Malalayalam mainstream music. Here was my choice to offer pure carnatic music for the masses. When I was growing up I really relished the carnatic songs in movies like Chithram, Kudumba sametham etc.

Here is a mix of what Anu played for the album.