Yollay - Roopa In Flux (feat Roopa Mahadevan): Carnatic Inspired Concert

Roopa Mahadevan
Music
Roopa Mahadevan is a versatile Indian Classical vocalist. Born and raised in San Jose, California, Roopa underwent her major formative training in Carnatic vocal music under Asha Ramesh, disciple of the late Sangeetha Kalanidhi D.K. Jayaraman and Sri Nanganallur Ramanathan. In 2007, Roopa was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship by the U.S. Department of State to receive advanced Carnatic vocal training in Chennai, India under Smt. Suguna Varadachari, a senior guru of the Musiri Subramania Iyer tradition. Roopa has been a regular performer of Carnatic vocal concerts in the U.S. and India. She has been performing in all of the major sabhas in Chennai, India during the December music season, including the prestigious Music Academy. She has received praise from the Carnatic music fraternity and notable press, including The Hindu. She has also performed at the well-known Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana, which gave her the title Kala Ratna for her commitment to the pursuit of Carnatic music as a young American. Roopa is also an accomplished Bharathanatyam dancer who has performed her arangetram under the training of the Smt. Indumathy Ganesh, disciple of Padmashri Smt. Chitra Visweswaran. Roopa is a sought-after singer for Bharathanatyam productions and has sung for a variety of artists, including C.V. Chandrasekhar, Bragha Bessel, Mythili Prakash, Rasika Kumar, Preeti Vasudevan, Vidhya Subramaniam, Janaki Rangarajan, Aparna Ramaswamy, Abhinaya Dance Company, Ragamala Dance Company, and Shakti Dance Company (CA) among several others. Roopa also enjoys performing R&B/soul music and has lent her voice to several contemporary art projects, including two urban/R&B music albums Lovespeak (with Everyday People A Capella), Bring Back the Nyte, and the album *Calling All Dawns* composed by Christopher Tin, which won the 2011 Grammy for Best Crossover Classical Album. In 2011, Roopa performed an exciting acting and singing role in Bakwas Bumbug, a first-ever Desi Musical directed by Samrat Chakrabarti and Sanjiv Jhaveri and produced by Desipina in New York City. Roopa has been fortunate to perform at prestigious venues, including the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Roopa is the artistic director of the NYC-based Navatman Music Collective, an Indian Classical Vocal ensemble, conceived by Navatman founder Sahi Sambamoorthy. Roopa was an inaugural 2013 fellow of IndianRaga and is a frequent instructor for the IndianRaga Labs program. Roopa received her Bachelors degree in Biology and Masters degree in Cognitive Science from Stanford University. She is based in New York City, where she enjoys a mission-driven career in public health policy while pursuing her artistic passions with equal vigor.

Anjna Swaminathan
Music
ANJNA SWAMINATHAN is a versatile artist in the field of South Indian Carnatic Violin. A disciple of the late violin maestro Parur Sri M.S. Gopalakrishnan and Mysore Sri H.K. Narasimhamurthy, she performs regularly in Carnatic, Hindustani and creative music settings. In the summer of 2014, Anjna was a participant at the celebrated Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in Alberta, Canada, where she worked closely with eminent jazz and creative musicians and led workshops on the fundamentals of Carnatic improvisation and listening. She has since performed with and been encouraged by established musicians in New York's thriving creative music scene including Jen Shyu, Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Amir ElSaffar, Imani Uzuri, Stephan Crump, Graham Haynes, Mat Maneri, Miles Okazaki and others. Anjna is a member of the ensemble RAJAS, led by her sister, percussionist-composer Rajna Swaminathan, which features a rotating collective of Indian classical musicians and jazz/creative musicians, and seeks to explore new improvisational and compositional possibilities stemming from the Indian classical idiom. In 2015, Anjna came under the tutelage of renowned vocalist and scholar, T.M. Krishna for her training in Carnatic music, and vocalist Samarth Nagarkar for her training in Hindustani music and accompaniment. She frequently engages with the burgeoning community of Indian classical musicians in New York and New Jersey, and is an active member of the Brooklyn Raga Massive, a growing artist-managed collective of musicians, performers and educators with a firm grounding in raga-based music and a mission to create a diverse, community-oriented artistic practice. As a theatre artist, writer and dramaturg with interests in the intersection of race, class/caste, gender and sexuality, Hindu vedantic philosophy, and the boundaries of postcolonial Indian nationhood, Anjna often engages in artistic work that ties together multiple aesthetic forms towards a critical consciousness. She frequently takes part in interdisciplinary collaborations, often developing scores and providing musical accompaniment for Bharatanatyam (South Indian classical) dancers and dance companies, most notably, Ragamala Dance Company (Minneapolis), Rama Vaidyanathan, Mythily Prakash and Malini Srinivasan. From 2010 to 2017, Anjna performed and toured extensively in the United States and abroad with the acclaimed Minneapolis-based company Ragamala Dance, led by Doris Duke Artists Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy, in whose projects she had the pleasure of working and performing alongside such artists as Rudresh Mahanthappa, Amir ElSaffar and Rez Abbasi. More recently, Anjna has delved into the realm of composition, and was commissioned (with co-composers Rajna Swaminathan and Sam McCormally) to create an original score for playwright/performer Anu Yadav's one-woman-play Meena's Dream. In her dramaturgical and theatrical work, she has a keen interest in developing new projects that seek to problematize the hierarchies of caste and gender that are inherent in her musical idiom, something that deeply informs her musical practice. Anjna is co-artistic director of Rhythm Fantasies, Inc. - a non-profit organization that strives to promote South Indian classical music and dance in a space that encourages education and enrichment through innovation and cross-cultural collaboration. Anjna holds a Bachelors degree in Theatre from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Rohan Krishnamurthy
Music
Acclaimed an international mridangam performer by USA Today and pride of India by India's leading newspaper, The Times of India, Dr. Rohan Krishnamurthy is considered a musical ambassador. Having initially received mridangam training with Damodaran Srinivasan over the telephone in the U.S., he continued advanced training from maestro, Guruvayur Dorai, in India. Rohan has performed hundreds of concerts internationally since the age of nine as a distinguished soloist and collaborator in diverse music and dance ensembles. His prodigious, cross-genre artistry draws from his formal study of Indian classical music, at once propagating the ancient tradition and expanding it in new artistic directions. Rohan has shared the stage with the leading artists of Indian classical music, including M. Balamuralikrishna, T.N. Krishnan, N. Ramani, R. K. Srikantan, T.N. Seshagopalan, Chitravina N. Ravikiran, S. Shashank, T. M. Krishna, O.S. Thyagarajan, and Ranjani and Gayatri. Having intensely studied many styles of music, he has also spearheaded new cross-musical collaborations with eminent symphony orchestras, jazz ensembles, and musicians including Grammy Award-winners Glen Velez and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Anoushka Shankar, Jamey Haddad, and Ayano Ninomiya. He recently premiered Rohan, a novel concerto for South Indian percussion and Western percussion ensemble written specially for him by distinguished composer and percussionist, Dr. Payton Macdonald. The concerto was premiered on both coasts at The Juilliard School in New York City and San Francisco Conservatory of Music in San Francisco. A highly-acclaimed educator, Rohan has presented Indian percussion institutes and summer camps, clinics, workshops, and master classes, and academic courses at world-renowned institutions, including the Eastman School of Music, Harvard University, MIT, Berklee College of Music, Duke, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Sam Houston State University, Western Michigan University, University of Madras (India), A.R. Rehmans K.M. Conservatory of Music (India), Society for Ethnomusicology, Percussive Arts Society International Convention, Interlochen Arts Academy, and National Institute of Design (India). He directs the award-winning RohanRhythm Percussion Studio, both in-person and online, which has attracted dozens of students of all ages from around the globe. Rohan is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including USA Todays All-College Academic Second Team, Young Artist of India by Bharat Kalachar (India), Thomas Siwe Scholarship from the Percussive Arts Society, and Prodigy in Performing Arts by the Indo-American Center in New York City. He was named an IndianRaga Fellow in 2013. An innovator, Rohan designed a new drumhead tuning system that won him first place in Eastmans New Venture Challenge entrepreneurship competition. His work resulted in a publication in the premier music journal, Percussive Notes. Rohan conducted acoustical research on his new design and has been regularly invited to present his work at the Acoustical Society of Americas international conferences, where he twice received the Best Student Paper award. Rohan also received a patent for his invention. Committed to community service and outreach, Rohan has conducted and organized concerts and workshops since 1998 at prominent centers, including Chinmaya Mission, The Banyan (India), Sankara Nethralaya, Sankara Eye Foundation, Lakeside Treatment and Learning Center, Kalamazoo Unitarian Church, Indo-American Cultural Center and Temple, Kalamazoo Juvenile Center, Washington Square Retirement Home, University of Rochester, and the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival, the largest Indian music festival outside of India. Rohans multifaceted accomplishments as a performer, composer, educator, researcher, and entrepreneur earned him a one-on-one meeting and performance for the President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, at the presidential office and estate in New Delhi. A native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and based out of San Francisco, Rohan obtained bachelors degrees in music and chemistry from Kalamazoo College as a Heyl Foundation Scholar, and Masters degrees in musicology and ethnomusicology from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He earned a Ph.D. in musicology at Eastman as a Provost Fellow, where he founded and directed a popular Indian percussion ensemble and summer institutes.

Roopa In Flux (feat Roopa Mahadevan): Carnatic Inspired Concert

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