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Heritage city recently witnessed an enthralling music show, with a reality touch ‘gaana tharang’, organised at Kalamandir by Kiran Kumar, CEO of the web portal mysooru.com. He came up with the idea to encourage the local talents providing a platform writes S Shivaranjini
Among more than 50 participants, 14 were selected for the grand finale of ‘gaana tharang’. Athishay Jain, 16 year-old pursuing his first year PUC at Raghavendra Gurukula, Kuvempunagar was the winner who was conferred with the title ‘Mysooru Ratna’ along with a cash prize of Rs 25,000. Son of Kundesh Mani Bhadra and Neeraja Kundesh couple, he has participated in many of the television reality shows.
He had his first lessons of classical music from his musician mother, he is learning the senior grade from R S Nandakumar. He learns deevaranama from Guruprasad, sugama sangeetha from Nithin Rajaram Shastri and keyboard from Venugopal Krishna. “Music is my mother’s gift. She is my inspiration and my teacher. Her female voice is my male voice,” he says.
He is also a district level chess player with many prizes. He excels in studies with 92.3 per cent in SSLC exam last year at Vidya Vardhaka school. He has an ambition of becoming an engineer along with which he wants himself to be placed in the list of good playback singer and composer. He has composed music for around 25 songs, which will be coming up as albums.
He is in the troupe which has been invited to Malaysia in April for a musical programme. He has an experience of singing for the ‘Hampi Utsava’ at the studio of Hamsalekha. Extremely happy over his winning in gaana tharang, he says, there was a tough competition among the singers, because all performed best.
Ashwin Prabhu, first runner up of the competition, is son of Mohandas Prabhu and Jyothi M Prabhu. He was awarded the cash prize Rs 10,000.
Prajwal Jain, a B Com student of Mahajana first grade college, was the second runner up winning cash prize of Rs 5,000 in the show. Prajwal has been inspired by his father Shashidhar, who used to sing for orchestras, and encouraged by his mother Asha since his early childhood. He is learning classical from Nithin Rajaram Shastri and practises tabla on his own. He follows the notes and with the great sense of music, he tries it himself.
“Through gana tharang I have got to know lot of things. When we see others sing, we recognise the mistakes and correct it when we sing. It was a nice experience being with gana tharang troupe as Kiran Kumar was not just an organiser but he stood by our sides and has guided to the extreme.”
Kiran Kumar said, all the singers were excellent. Many had no classical background but their voice had magic. I guess the judges had tough time as all sung well. We had to select only best three but each one has their individual talent, he added.