Smt. Srividya Chandramouli

Sreevidhya Chandramouli, a resident of Portland, Oregon since late 80s, is from the illustrious Karaikudi Vina Tradition, the only living tradition from South India with more than ten generations of Vina players. Sreevidhya learnt from her mother Rajeswari Padmanabhan and continues the tradition combining voice and vina in her performances. Sreevidhya later pursued vocal training with Late. Sri. Vairamanagalam Lakshminarayanan and also from Smt. Suguna Varadachari.

Sreevidhya majored in music from University of Madras. She has served as a visiting artist at University of Washington and as artist-in-residence at University of Oregon. She offers regular lecture demonstrations on Indian music and culture at University of Oregon. Her performance and teaching career spans over 25 years. She has performed in Asia, Europe and North America. She is a regular performer at the All India Radio and Indian Doordarshan (TV). Some of her prestigious concerts include performances at Festival of Saitanklange (Festival of Stringed Instruments, Museum für Völkerkunde & House of World Cultures, Germany), Long night of Indian Music for Sender Freies Berlin (Berlin Radio) and KIT Tropentheater, Netherlands. Sreevidhya has won several awards and has a few recordings to her credit. She was featured along with her mother in the book The Singer & the Song: Conversations with women musicians by C.S. Lakshmi (published in 2000).

Sreevidhya is also a watercolor painter and disciple of the musician-scholar-painter Sri.S.Rajam. Her paintings were exhibited by the Cedar Mill Library (Washington County, Oregon).

Sreevidhya is a practicing vina melam builder (veena fretting). In the summer of 2005, she collaborated with Brhaddhvani, a Research & Training center for Musics of the World at Chennai, India (www.brhaddhvani.org) on a project to make vina and tambura. Under this project, a group of her vina students from Pacific Northwest apprenticed under Sri. Natarajan, the master artisan at Brhaddhvani.

Sreevidhya Chandramouli and her husband chandramouli Narayanan are founding members of the non-profit organization Dhvani (www.dhvani.org) committed to the Education, Preservation and Dissemination of arts of India.

Recordings

Music of the Veena II, JVC, CD recording, 1989. (Performed in tandem with mother Rajeswari Padmanbhan and Tanjore Upendran on the Mridangam).

Music of South India, Karaikudi Veena Tradition, Maruta, SonicSoul Acoustics 1998(Solo Veena performance with Mannargudi Easwaran on the Mridangam). [CD Maruta provided the music background in the documentary ‘Biography of an American Hostess’ by Shilpa Sunthankar]

Live-broadcast of her music on Dutch radio (streaming audio archive): VPRO de wandelende tak by Walter Slosse (presented together with Ludwig Pesch)

Interview

An interview with Sreevidhya Chandramouli on Saraswati Veena conducted by South Asian Women’s Forum is at http://www.sawf.org/music/interviews/veena/veena.asp?pn=Music