Winners of Carnatic Quest announced

HCL Concerts’s The Carnatic Quest, a contest aimed at identifying young Carnatic musicians, has announced its winners.

The competition had five categories including vocal, veena, violin, flute, and percussion instruments (mridangam, ghatam and kanjeera). It received around 800 entries from around 175 cities in the country. The final round had 40 entries, of which 10 artistes were selected by jury members Veena exponent Dr Jayanthi Kumaresh, violinist Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi, vocalist, singer and composer Sudha Ragunathan and Grammy-nominated flautist Shashank Subramanyam.

Winners of the contest are P Vikram (Chennai), Abhishek Ravishankar (Chennai) and Smruthi Bhaskar (Bengaluru) in vocals, K R Shrievats (Chennai), Adarsh Ajaykumar (Thrissur) and V S P Gayatri Sivani (Hyderabad) in veena, Hariprasad Subramanian (Kochi) in flute, and Kishore Ramesh (Chennai), Hariharan Sundarraman (Chennai) and Sumukh Karanth (Mangalore) in percussion. The young participants were judged on parameters like technical knowledge of music, presentation, and communication.

The concert was conceptualised along with Rhapsody Music Foundation founder Anil Srinivasan.

Dr Sudha Raja, vice president, Rhapsody Music Foundation says, “The concept aimed to keep music practice alive for young artistes, even during the pandemic. We had 385 entries in the vocal category alone.”

There were 385 entries in the vocal category; 15 made into the semifinals. Although the initial entries included pre-recorded material sent by artistes, in the finals, the contestants had to record in a home set up, without other accompaniments than the specified category. The winners will perform at the digital HCL Concerts. An album with songs and performances by the artistes will be produced.