Concert at Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, MA

 

Tara Anand Bangalore started learning to sing Carnatic music at the age of four, studying with leading teachers in both New Delhi and Madras. Vocal music is the main emphasis of Carnatic music, which evolved from Hindu traditions hundreds of years ago in southern India. The building blocks of Carnatic music are the sruti "musical pitch", swara "musical sound of a single note", raga "melodic scale", and tala "rhythmic cycle. Tara has practiced this art form for more than forty years and for the last two decades has taught at the school she founded in 1989, the Anubhava School of Music. She has become one of the stalwarts in Carnatic music and a leading vocalist in the Greater Boston area.

Apprentice Sudarshan Thirumalai showed incredible promise at a very young age. He began his studies with Tara in 2003. At the age of thirteen, Sudarshan performed a four-hour concert that was received extremely well by critics and audience alike. As one Mass Cultural Council panelist commented, "He's more from within the culture than I've seen in India. It's as if he has a prior knowledge; he is a vessel for the tradition."Their 2012-13 apprenticeship will focus on honing Sudarshan's performance skills, with an emphasis on more rhythmically complex pieces. Tara will also introduce basic training in teaching, so Sudarshan can learn how to transfer his learning to his peers and the younger students that follow in his footsteps.