News & Notes
Centenary Celebrations

Madirimangalam Ramachandran was a student in the Sangeeta Bhushanam course at Annamalai University when Tiger Varadachariar joined as Principal of the Music College in 1937. He continued to learn under Tiger after completing his diploma. Ramachandran subsequently joined All India Radio, where he became Chief Producer of Music at AIR, New Delhi.
The centenary celebration
of this revered musician was celebrated as a day-long function at the Kasturi
Srinivasan Hall at the Music Academy, Chennai, on 15 June 2023 by his students
who gathered from around the world.
In the morning session, a souvenir for the centenary celebration was released by Kalyanasundaram and
mridangam vidwan Arunprakash. The morning session concluded with a group
rendition by the disciples of Madirimangalam Ramachandran. Singers Anuradha
Varadarajan, D.Aravamudan, Aarthi Srinivasan, Yamini Ramesh, Subhashini Harish,
Mangalam Krishnan and Jayanthi Kalayansundaram were accompanied by V.V.
Srinivasa Rao and Arvind Pandurangan on the violin, and B Ganapathy Raman, Guru
Ragavendra, Anurag Sethuraman and Ramachmadran Gopalakrishnan on the mridangam.
In the afternoon, Sangita Kalanidhi, T.N. Seshagopalan,
spoke about his association with Madirimangalam Ramachandran, his music and his
contribution towards developing youngsters in the field. K.Vageesh, Guest of
Honour, also spoke about his early days in Delhi and how Ramachandran
recognised his talent at his first concert in Delhi. Special Guest M.G.
Swaminathan spoke about Ramachandran’s humble and helpful personality, and he
cherished his memories during the 60s and 70s in Delhi.
Guest of Honour Delhi P Sunder Rajan reminisced about his
first concert accompanying Ramachandran. Special Invitee Prof. V
Gopalakrishnan, a colleague of Ramachandran in AIR Delhi, spoke and recollected
his association with him. Other Special invitees, V.S.K Chakrapani, V.V.
Srinivasa Rao and A. Premkumar, paid their respects to the guru.
Aiswarya and Maheswari, granddaughters of Ramachandran,
reminisced about their grandfather and sang a bhajan, the last composition he
tuned.
The function concluded with two concerts. The first was a vocal concert by K.Vageesh accompanied by Madurai Vijayganesh on the violin and B.Ganapthy Raman on the mridangam. The final concert was by Delhi P. Sunder Rajan, accompanied by Neyveli Narayanan (mridangam), Haritha Narayanan (violin) and Adambakkam Sankar on the ghatam.